1979 — Ghana's Third Republic Begins

On September 24, 1979, Ghana's Third Republic was inaugurated as Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings handed power to elected President Hilla Limann. Rawlings's Armed Forces Revolutionary Council had ruled for just 112 days after its June 4 coup, conducting a bloody "housecleaning" that executed former heads of state. Limann, of the People's National Party, had won a July runoff election.

Limann took office promising a return to constitutional rule, but the democratic experiment lasted barely two years: Rawlings overthrew him in another coup on December 31, 1981, and ruled Ghana for the next two decades. The Third Republic remains Ghana's shortest-lived republic, but its constitution influenced the stable Fourth Republic established in 1993.