National Communication Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has said the MP of Assin North was qualified to contest in his constituency for the 2020 election.
Sammy Gyamfi believes “I think the judge erred because if you look at the grounds under which a High Court can annul a Parliamentary election.”
Speaking on PM Express, he cited “Section 20 of the Representation of the People Law PNDC Law 284,” while explaining that; “what that section says is that the High Court can only annul a Parliamentary election if a candidate is not qualified to contest the election at the time of the election, not at the time of nominations.”
This comes on the back of a Cape Coast High Court Annulment of the 2020 Parliamentary elections in the Assin North Constituency and ordering for fresh elections to be conducted in the constituency.
Following the challenge of the nationality of the NDC MP, Gyaakye Quayson by a resident of Assin North, Mr Michael Ankomah-Nimfah.
He filed a petition at the Supreme Court to oppose the eligibility of Mr Quayson with claims that the MP at the time of filing to contest in the 2020 parliamentary election has not renounced his Canadian citizenship.
The MP, however, before the judgment also filed processes at the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal but processed were dismissed on Monday.
Handing his judgement on the substantive matter on Wednesday, July 28, the judge said the MP violated constitutional provisions and other statutory provisions that guide Ghana’s elections.
Nevertheless, Mr Gyamfi noted that Mr Quayson was duly qualified to contest in the parliamentary election which took place on December 7, 2020.
This, he said, was because “Mr Quayson applied to renounce his citizenship of Canada 2019 and got his certificate of renunciation on the 26th of November 2020 before the December 7 election and before he was sworn in 2021.”
He also argued that “under section 11 of the same law, of the Representation of the People law PNDC law 284 the lawmaker has stated a clear difference between nomination and election and so if the lawmaker was intended to say the person should have qualified by the time of the official nomination, the law would have stated so expressly.”
“But in this case, the law said the person must be qualified to contest for the election at the time of his election… so clearly he was qualified to contest as MP and the judge has no base in law to annul the election, he explained,” he told JoyNews.
