Ahmad Tejan Kabbah

Ahmad Tejan Kabbah (2007)

Ahmad Tejan Kabbah (2003)

Ahmad Tejan Kabbah ( February 16, 1932 in Pendembu – March 13, 2014 in Freetown ) was President of Sierra Leone from 1996 to 2007 .

early years

Kabbah was from Pendembu, Kailahun district of Eastern Province , and belonged to the Mandinka people . He came from a Muslim family and was considered very religious. He attended the country's oldest Catholic school, St Edwards . He studied at Cardiff College of Technology and Commerce and at the University of Wales , where he received his Bachelor's degree in Economics in 1959. He then studied law and became a barrister in 1969) . He practiced in London . In Sierra Leone he entered the civil service and was employed in the administration of several districts and later in various ministries.

United Nations

For a period of around 20 years he worked for the United Nations . He was deputy director of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for West Africa when he was put in charge of that organization's projects in Lesotho , South Africa, in 1973 . Further stations at the UNDP were the branches in Tanzania , Uganda and, shortly before its formal independence , Zimbabwe . He was then posted to the organization 's headquarters at United Nations headquarters in New York , where he headed the departments for East and South Africa. He was also responsible for working with the Organization of African Unity -recognized groups, the African National Congress (ANC, South Africa ) and the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO, Namibia ). Before retiring in 1992, he was Deputy Director and later Director of Human Resources and Administrative Director of UNDP.

Political career

After the coup by a group of young army officers under Valentine Strasser against President Joseph Saidu Momoh , who had been in power since 1985, on April 29, 1992, the new junta asked him to chair a council to help draft a new constitution. Shortly before the planned presidential elections, Julius Maada Bio overthrew Strasser in another coup on January 16, 1996. February 1996. Kabbah won first place as the candidate of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) with 35.8% of the votes in the first ballot. In the parliamentary elections taking place at the same time, his party won 27 of the 68 seats. In the second ballot on March 15, 1996, he won with 59.5% and took office as Bio's successor 14 days later. He formed a government with the participation of almost every group represented in Parliament.

Meanwhile, the war waged by the rebel organization Revolutionary United Front (RUF) against the changing governments of Sierra Leone, which has been going on since 1991 , continued. In November 1996 he signed an agreement with the RUF in Abidjan , but this did not improve the situation. A first attempted coup against him in 1996 failed, a second on May 25, 1997 led to his temporary ouster. He went into exile in Guinea .

The coup plotters led by Johnny Paul Koroma were driven out of the capital, Freetown , in March 1998 through intervention by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) , and Kabbah was able to return. To support his government, troops from neighboring countries remained stationed in the country as part of the ECOMOG peacekeeping force. On July 7, 1999, in Lomé , Kabbah signed another peace agreement with the RUF which, although violence initially continued, brought the civil war to an end by early 2002 with the support of the United Nations ( UNAMSIL ). The official end of the conflict, which has been going on since 1991, was announced at a ceremony on January 18, 2002 – two days after the signing of a bilateral agreement between Sierra Leone and the United Nations establishing the Special Court for Sierra Leone . On May 14, 2002, he was re-elected President for a five-year term with 70.1% of the vote on the first ballot, and his party won 83 of the 112 seats in Parliament. Kabbah also assumed the post of Secretary of Defense.

He was one of the signers of the Embassy from Amman .

On August 4, 2006, he announced new elections for August 11, 2007, in which he did not run again.

On September 17, 2007, Kabba handed over the presidency to his successor, Ernest Bai Koroma .

family and private life

Kabbah was widowed and the father of five children. His first marriage was to Patricia, née Tucker, who died in 1998 and was a Catholic from southern Sierra Leone. In his second marriage he was connected to Isata Jabbie, who was about 40 years his junior. They married on May 11, 2008, almost 10 years after they met.

Kabbah died in Freetown on March 13, 2014 after a short illness. He received a state funeral on March 23, 2014, after a week of public mourning.

web links

• Election results at African Elections Database
• The BBC at the end of the Civil War, January 18, 2002 (English)
• Time Magazine on Kabbah , August 18, 2002

itemizations

1. ↑ Ex-Sierra Leone president Kabbah dies at 82
2. ↑ BBC : Sierra Leone sets 2007 poll date , 4 August 2006
3. ↑ Kabbah ends honeymoon for trial. BBC, May 16, 2008.
4. ↑ Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, Who Guided Sierra Leone to Peace, Dies at 82 . In: The New York Times . The New York Times. March 14, 2014.
5. ↑ Sierra Leone war-time leader Ahmad Tejan Kabbah dies . In: BBC . BBC . March 13, 2014.
6. ↑ As Tejan Kabbah Passes On... 7 Days Mourning Begins Today! . In: Sierra Leone News Hunters . Sierra Leone News Hunters. 14 March 2014. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015.
7. ↑ State funeral for president Kabba on Sunday 23 March . In: Sierra Leone Telegraph . Sierra Leone Telegraph. 18 March 2014. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015.