Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare popularly known as Kwaku Azar has described the Supreme Court ruling on the James Gyakye Quayson case as bizarre.
According to him, the ruling is the worst judgement ever delivered by the apex court, and as if it had already decided it will remove the MP.
The Supreme Court declared the election of the Member of Parliament for Assin North, James Gyakye Quayson null and void. And directed Parliament to expunge his name from its records.
Kwaku Azar, however, argued the case is filled with a plethora of errors.
The Supreme Court ruled that Gyakye Quayson was not qualified to contest the 2020 parliamentary elections in the Assin North Constituency at the time he filed his nomination forms on October 9, 2020.
Speaking on Point of View on Citi TV, however, a fellow at the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD- Ghana), Kwaku Azar stated that of all the Ghanaian cases he has seen, this one stands out as almost the worst.
He said, “Because when you read the case, there is a plethora of errors. From misinterpreting the Constitution to shredding statues to inserting timelines where there are no timelines.”
“It’s almost as if the court decided we are going to remove this guy [Quayson] for whatever reason. And we don’t care how many laws we break or how many rules we violate. We are going to do it anyway.”
According to him, a person can owe allegiance to a country for a variety of reasons. He argued it is almost like saying that allegiance and citizenship are inexplicably tied, “So when the president swears the oath of allegiance, he’s swearing the oath of citizenship.”
That, he said, is completely bizarre.
“I have never heard such strange reasoning. One can owe allegiance to a country for a variety of reasons, citizenship is only one of them.”
“People who are not citizens owe allegiance to the country because they must follow the rules, the government must protect them.”
“We call that local allegiance. When the president swears the oath of allegiance, he’s swearing an occupation-related allegiance,” he avowed.