GHANA: Jerry Who?

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A coup before civilian rule

Residents of Accra were startled last week when a low-flying jet trainer zoomed over government-built skyscrapers in the Ghanaian capital. People in villages as far as 400 miles away were later treated to the same unusual sight. The pilot of the plane was Flight Lieut. Jerry Rawlings, 33. The madcap buzzing was his way of announcing that the fourth coup in the country's 22 years as an independent nation had apparently succeeded.

Rawlings' overthrow of the military junta headed by Lieut. General Frederick Akuffo, who came to power by toppling General Ignatius Acheampong last year, was unusual in two respects. First of all, it was Rawlings' second try in only a month; until being sprung by air force compatriots, he had been locked up in an Accra prison while being court-martialed for his role in plotting an abortive coup in May. Second, the overthrow of Akuffo's regime came only two weeks before elections that were supposed to restore civilian government to Ghana after 13 years of almost uninterrupted military rule. A spokesman for the newly installed Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, which Rawlings now heads, announced over Ghana's official radio station that the election would take place on schedule. The spokesman warned, however, that the planned transition to a nonmilitary regime might be postponed long enough for a "housecleaning" of Ghana's thoroughly corrupt military elite.

The nightclub-loving son of a Scottish father and a Ghanaian mother, Rawlings seemed to be an unlikely leader for such a cleanup. But he appears to mean business. He has told friends that he was appalled by the military government's routine kickbacks and contract rigging. As a first step in reform, he ordered the arrest of a host of high-ranking officials suspected of graft, including former President Acheampong, who had leniently been exiled to his native village in lieu of being tried. Rawlings followed up the arrests with a blunt warning to civilian winners of the forthcoming elections: "Anyone of you who misuses the opportunity to serve the country will be shot outright." -