New Patriotic Party (NPP) stalwart, J.H Mensah, has died.
Reports indicate that he died today, Thursday, July 12, 2018, from complications arising from a stroke he suffered in 2017.
Joseph Henry Mensah had been at the 37 military Hospital for the past 12 months.
He was 89 years old.
Born October 30, 1928, J.H. Mensah’s political life saw him serve as Finance Minister under Kofi Busia’s Progress Party (PP) administration from 1969 to 1972, which was cut short by Ignatius Kutu Acheampong’s coup.
He was also the Senior Minister under President John Kufuor decades later in 2001.
J.H. Mensah’s life in politics began in 1953, when he worked as an assistant inspector of taxes.
In 1958, he joined the United Nations Secretariat at the Centre for Development Planning, Projections and Policies.
He returned to Ghana in 1961 to Head the National Planning Commission at age 34.
Under his leadership, the National Planning Commission drew up and implemented the Seven-Year Development Plan from 1962 to 1969.
In 1969, he was elected to Parliament and became the Minister of Finance until 1972.
After Acheampong’s 1972 coup, J.H. Mensah was imprisoned under the National Redemption Council (NRC) in 1975.
He was later forced into exile in the early 1980s but still headed a group opposed to the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) led by Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings.
After Ghana entered its Fourth Republic, in 1992, he served on the African Advisory Council of the African Development Bank from 1993 to 1997.
In December 1996, J.H. Mensah successfully contested for a parliamentary seat in Sunyani East District on the ticket of the NPP and served as the Minority Leader in Parliament.
He was re-elected in 2000, when the NPP assumed the mantle of governance after over three decades in opposition.
He never saw himself as having retired from politics although he has not been active in it, because for him, “Once a servant, always a servant”, he once said.
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Source: Citinewsroom.com/Ghana
