James Gyakye Quayson, The late Adamu Dramani Sakande
I don’t care whether the dam breaks or not. After all, when the sea is rough, the fishes don’t give a dime. In fact, I don’t really care whether dishonorable Gyakye Quayson wins the impending Assin North by-election and neither do I care a hoot if he loses his bid to become the Member of Parliament again haven been disqualified by the Supreme Court for dubiously misleading the Electoral Commission (EC) to accept his nomination form for the 2020 Parliamentary Elections.
History will record him as a Member of Parliament of Ghana who held a dual citizenship but was able to meander his way to be elected as the MP when he surely knew that what he did was illegal. History will say when the chickens came home to roost; he was booted out of Parliament with disgrace.
My interest is what will happen when some legalalistic purists decide to take him to court for one reason or the other. He is already facing some charges in court which could land him in jail if he loses the case. As they say, there is no status bar as far as the law is concern.
From all indications, there is no difference between Mr. Quayson and the late Adamu Sakande, the former MP for Bawku Central. Mr. Quayson is riding on the back of a tiger and very soon he will find himself in the mouth of the beast. In fact, he is walking on a political tight rope and if he slips, he will come tumbling down.
Adamu Sakande sojourned in the UK for several years and when the seat of Bawku Central became vacant he decided to fly down and contest. The NPP leadership did not make any background check on the guy and allowed him to run for the Parliamentary seat. And he won. Barely two years later, one Sumaila Beblie, an NDC cattle dealer, took him to court for holding a dual citizenship. The case went up and down in the law courts and finally, Sakande was found guilty and jailed at the Nsawam Maximum prison.
He felt ill and at the verge of dying. The state pardoned him and he flew back to the UK only to die a few months later. The NDC was then in power but nobody blamed the courts for the ruling like the way Mr. Mahama is bastardizing the courts over the disqualification of Gyekye Quayson. What a dreadful and sad story of Adamu Sakande, a fine gentleman. I used to love his demeanor and the way he respected anyone he met but the law has no respect for all these qualities.
Gyekye Quayson sojourned in Canada for more than 45 years and also flew back to Ghana to contest the NDC Parliamentary Primaries of Assin North in 2012. The NDC did a background check on him following a tip off from some of the NDC contestants and found that he held a dual citizenship. He was barred from contesting by the leadership of the NDC.
He flew back to Canada only to come back in 2016 to contest again without denouncing his citizenship of Canada, thinking that Ghanaians are dunderheads and shortsighted as Mr. Mahama referred to and once again he was barred from running by his own party.
Then once again he flew back to Canada and returned to contest the 2020 Parliamentary Election and lied to the EC that everything about his denunciation was correct. He was then allowed to file his papers. Unknown to the EC, the documents presented by Mr. Quayson was doctored.
Before the elections, somebody challenged him at the court for presenting a questionable document before he was allowed to contest. Gyekye Quayson unsuccessfully defended himself in public but the problem still lingered on till he won the Assin North Parliamentary seat. Since crime has no status bar, he lived with the nemesis till finally he was booted out of parliament by the Supreme Court of Ghana.
From the above mentioned narration, only a person suffering from infantile disorder will say it was the NPP that engineered the removal of Gyekye Quayson from Parliament. And there was Mr. Mahama again at his lying best when he met supporters of the NDC at Assin North.
He said it was the NPP that orchestrated the removal of the man from parliament because they wanted the number to pass the E-Levy. Oh! Honour and truth, where have thou flown to?
He also lied through his teeth that all the alleged development projects executed by Mr. Gyekye Quayson was done from his own pocket money since he was not paid a pesewa since he entered parliament and neither was any Common Fund paid to him.
Mr. Mahama says the Akufo-Addo led the government has done nothing for the people of Assin North and NDC zombies clapped for him like the way cripples clap when they see a hunchback running because they could not run as the hunchback did.
Meanwhile, their children who would have been working on their cocoa farms, roaming the streets and idling away at home, are attending free SHS and eating free hot meals a day.
School blocks are being built and their roads are being fixed even before the by-election was declared. In the face of the economic hardships being experienced all over the world, Assin North people continue to survive, hoping that the storm will calm down one day as we trudge along.
And there was this pretty low grade politician who also said the NPP wanted Gyekye Quayson out of Parliament so that they could get the number to pass the LGBT Bill which was laid before parliament through a Private Members bill, including some members of the NPP. How stupid and childish! Some people in the NDC, out of desperation for political power have made politics too sour to taste.
In fact, they talk before they think. Have they all too soon forgotten that the best friend of their tin god, Mr. Mahama is Andrew Solomon, the number one gay man and campaigner of gay rights? Was it not the same Andrew Solomon who came to Ghana to Launch Mr. Mahama’s book, “My First Coup De Etat? No wonder the sages say birds of the same feathers flock together. Who can promote gay rights in Ghana more than John Mahama? The Akans say ‘kyre me wo adamfo na me nkyre wo suban.’ (Show me your friend and I will show you your character).
Eric Bawah