The Rt. Honourable Peter Ala Adjetey, the immediate past Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament, is dead.

Reports reaching Joy FM say the celebrated lawyer passed away early Tuesday morning after a short illness.

The affable politician, whose baritone voice while he presided over Parliament and his impartial approach to issues so endeared him to both sides of the august House, was said to have been rushed to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for attention on Friday.

Indeed a week earlier, on July 5, just two days after he was decorated by President J.A. Kufuor at the National Awards ceremony on July 3 with the Order of the Star-Member, as a Lawyer/Politician and Former Speaker of Parliament for his Public Service and Development of the Legislature, he had been to the Trust Hospital at Osu for medicare, looking not very strong on that occasion.

Peter Ala Adjetey, born 11 August 1931, was the second Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana in the Fourth Republic.

A prominent son of La in Accra, Peter Ala Adjetey obtained his basic education at St. Paul's School at La and the Accra Bishop Boys' School. His secondary education was at Accra Academy from where he proceeded to the University College of the Gold Coast (now the University of Ghana), where he obtained the University of London intermediate Bachelor of Arts degree in 1954. He then proceeded to the United Kingdom, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree from University of Nottingham in 1958.

Mr. Adjetey was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in London in 1959. He returned to Ghana in the same year where he was also called to the Bar.