Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, the Right Honourable Speaker of Parliament, has described the late former President Jerry John Rawlings as “very infectious”.

According to Bagbin, many people refer to JJ Rawlings as a charismatic servant-leader, and he always carried people along everywhere he went.

Citing his first encounter with Rawlings, the acknowledged founder of the NDC, Bagbin who is the former MP for Nadowli Kaleo recalled that when he was a student at the University of Ghana in 1979, Rawlings’s charisma inspired him to become the president of the Student’s Union in Wa.

“Many referred to Papa J as a charismatic servant-leader; for me what I know about him is that he was very infectious. Anywhere he went, he carried almost everybody along,” Alban Bagbin said at a symposium organised by the NDC at the Kama Conference Centre, Accra, in memory of the late former President of Ghana, Jerry John Rawlings.

Bagbin indicated that as a military officer, Rawlings got every Ghanaian to love his style and he got many people to praise and eulogise him for his charisma “just like how they are praising and eulogising him today”.

Bagbin stressed that all that the late former military and later civilian leader of Ghana stood for will depend on how the political party he has left behind carries on with their activities.

“He has sown the seed and I believe strongly he has sowed [it] on fertile soil. His entry and his exit are [both] the same. He entered with a bang and he exited with another bang,” Bagbin said. “He has a listening ear, he respects seniority, he respects authority, he respects positions and has an unending passion or crave for intellectualism. He respects the elite a lot.”

Bagbin added that for the eight years he worked with the former president when he, the former, was a Majority party MP during the Rawlings administration, he realised that “it is very easy to understand Jerry John Rawlings”.

Alban Bagbin stated that the NDC, while JJ Rawlings was alive, was doing everything possible to bury his legacy “just because history is being rewritten by some people who are our opponents”.

The symposium at the Kama Conference Centre forms part of a series of activities planned to commemorate the former President.

Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings (Rtd.) passed away on Thursday, November 12, 2020, at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital after a short illness.

He was 73-years-old.

He left behind his wife the former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, and four children.