A member of the legal team representing the National Democratic Congress’ 2020 Parliamentary Candidate for Assin North, James Gyakye Quayson, Godwin Edudzi Tamakloe, says they have cogent reasons to challenge the Cape Coast High Court’s decision to nullify the election of his client as a parliamentarian.
According to him, their stance is detailed in their appeal filed at the court’s registry on Monday, August 2, 2021.
Mr. Tamakloe said, allowing the judgement to hold without challenging it will set a bad precedent for the country’s democracy.
He said his side is confident in their appeal, and is very hopeful that the High Court’s ruling will be set aside.
“The filing of that notice of appeal is the clearest demonstration of how vehemently we disagree with that judgement. And so for us, we believe that the grounds of the appeal that we have formulated have the real likelihood of getting this judgement set aside for us. The danger with allowing this judgement to hold in our statues books is that it will manifest injustice against other people,” he said.
The Cape Coast High Court last Wednesday ruled that Mr. Quayson, at the time of filing his documents to contest the election in Assin North, still held allegiance to another country other than Ghana.
The Court thus cancelled the said election, ordering a re-run of the poll in Assin North, and, consequently, prohibited James Quayson from holding himself out as Member of Parliament for the area.
But in a notice of appeal filed on Monday, August 2, 2021, at the Court of Appeal, Cape Coast, Mr. Quayson said the ruling delivered by the High Court presided over by Justice Kwasi Boakye was neither based in law nor in fact.
A legal team member for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Henry Nana Boakye, also insisted that despite the appeal application, Mr. Quayson can neither hold himself as MP nor present himself in Parliament.
But Edudzi Tamakloe hinted that the team will file a stay of execution on the court’s orders pending the final determination of the appeal application.
He said given that there is an opportunity for an automatic 7-day window for an executable order to take place, there is still time for the application to be filed.
“Just wait for what will be done within this period… We have appealed the judgement. You don’t stay [the execution] before filing a notice of appeal. The notice was only filed on Monday,” he stated.
