I was virtually stunned by Ghana’s apex court’s decision to have James Gyakye-Quayson’s name effaced from the list of legislators. I strongly disagree with the unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court. Justice emanates from logic but not absurdity. Independence of the judiciary and judicial review [power given to the court to declare the unconstitutional act of executive and legislature as null and void] are protected by the 1992 constitution. Americophile fundamental human rights and its concomitant Puritan egalitarian ideals are borrowed and infused in the afore-referenced constitution. It is therefore mournful to see every Supreme Court Judge becoming a poodle of Akufo-Addo because he appointed most of them. Supreme Court’s ruling was a clear violation of James Gyakye-Quayson’s fundamental human rights rigidly enshrined in the foregoing constitution. The ruling is nothing short of a far cry from Justice.
The apex court of Ghana argued that by the time Gyakye-Quayson was contesting he was not qualified. This is a warped logic because contesting an election entails a process but not a singular act. Are the judges saying that throughout their profession, none of them has ever contacted a bank manager for an overdraft in anticipation that the salary will come? At the time Gyakye-Quayson was being voted for as an MP representing Assin North constituents, his Canadian citizenship renunciation certificate had arrived, so he was duly qualified. Suffice it to say that Gyakye-Quayson did not have the required document at the time of filing to contest as a lawmaker, he was cleared by the electoral commission [EC]. For heaven’s sake, he did not clear himself as a candidate. In Ghana, many students purchase university admission forms before their secondary school results are released in anticipation that they will pass their high school examinations.
The year 2020 goes down in history as a dark year with Covid-19 exigencies, Ghana airport closed for many months, international travel restrictions and it goes on ad infinitive. It was not Gyakye-Quayson’s fault that his renunciation certificate did not come in time. Obviously, he had no intention to disregard the laws regarding elections.
Wonders will never cease, the same New Patriotic Party [NPP] members desiring the exit of the beleaguered Gyakye-Quayson from parliament because he did not wait for his Canadian citizenship renunciation certificate to arrive before filing to contest the 2020 election are now backing EC who will not wait for the National Identification Authority {NIA] to register all Ghanaians before making Ghana card the sole required document for voter registration. They are anticipating that by the time electorates vote in the election 2024, NIA will finish the registration process. Is there any difference between Gyakye-Quayson’s expectations and that of NPP and EC’s expectations? A former American Supreme Court Judge, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., distilled his argument in a single sentence: “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.” Indeed one of the thoughts patriotic Ghanaians hate is almost invariably every judge of the Justice Anin Yeboah-led apex court becoming increasingly timorous and always ruling in favor of the Akufo-Addo-led NPP.
God Bless Our Homeland Ghana. And Help Us Resist Oppressor’s Rule.
By Nana Yaw Osei, Ph.D., Minnesota, USA
