The National Democratic Congress (NDC) should take responsibility for the Supreme Court's decision to overturn James Gyakye Quayson's election as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Assin North, according to Gary Nimako Marfo, the NPP's director of legal affairs.
He asserts that the Quayson fiasco might have been averted if the NDC had followed the Supreme Court's 2016 ruling in the case of Ex parte Zanetor, in which the court determined that the eligibility requirements for becoming an MP under Article 94 of the 1992 Constitution take effect when the Electoral Commission (EC) opens nominations for candidates to file for elections.
When the EC opened nominations for the 2020 elections in October of last year, according to Mr. Nimako, a lawyer in the Zanetor case, Mr. Quayson should have made sure he met all of the requirements under Article 94 of the Constitution as it was interpreted in the Zanetor case before filing to run for office.
He consequently characterised as unpersuasive the claims made by certain NDC members that the Supreme Court erred in invalidating the election of
Mr. Quayson, as he received a document in November relinquishing his Canadian citizenship ahead of the elections in December 2020.
"In law, a solid basis is required for everything. Nothing can be put on nothing and expected to work. Because Mr. Quayson had not relinquished his Canadian citizenship when he applied to run, the basis of his election was unlawful. "All the processes that followed collapsed because the filing was incorrect," he claimed.
Lessons
In contrast to the NDC, Mr. Marfo claimed, the NPP established a verification committee in 2016 after the Zanetor case to make sure that none of its candidates for parliament violated Article 94 of the Constitution.
The verification committee, according to him, is the last line of defence and has the authority to propose to the National Executive Council (NEC) that a candidate be disqualified even if they have won a primary if it finds that they do not meet any of the requirements set out in Article 94 of the Constitution.
"It is impossible for this issue to arise in the NPP if the candidate had undergone vetting in the constituency and had won the primary; everything is validated by the verification committee, he said.
A violation of the law
The Supreme Court ruled on May 17 that Mr. Quayson's entire election process—including the filling out of nomination forms, the actual election, and the swearing-in—violated Article 94(2)(a) of the 1992 Constitution, which prohibits someone with dual citizenship from running for office.
The court reasoned that Mr. Quayson had not yet renounced his Canadian citizenship when he submitted his candidature paperwork in October 2020 to run for the Assiniboine North seat.
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