The much-talked-about Assin North by-election now belongs to the dustbin of history. James Gyakye Quayson, aka Mr. Canadian, managed to retain the seat in a very fierce contest against his opponent from the Elephant fraternity. But the contest cannot be dumped without looking at the issues it has generated.
Now that Mr. Canadian has retained the seat, the question on many lips is what his fate would be in the criminal case at the High Court.
While those from the Zu-za camp believe Mr. Canadian has a very strong case, those riding on the Elephant think the sad fate of Adamu Sakande would repeat itself.
Yours truly belongs to the latter group. I have the conviction that the High Court will corroborate the Supreme Court’s stance that Mr. Canadian had dual nationality as at that time he filed to contest the elections in 2020. The net effect is that we are going to see Mr Canadian march morosely to jail. What a sad end that would be!
Zu-za would be expected to cry foul and make all manner of noise. But that wouldn’t change the fact that they compelled the man to take the risk of putting his hand in the blazing fire with his eyes wide open.
In the meantime, Mr. Canadian’s criminal trial has been adjourned to July 4 to allow his legal team file a motion for a stay of proceedings pending appeal at the Court of Appeal.
Mr. Canadian is currently appealing a High Court ruling that his criminal case should be heard on a daily basis. We keep our fingers crossed and see how the matter pans out.
It was a deserved victory for Zu-za as they utilised the situation to their advantage. Zu-za’s main propaganda was that the Nana Dee government was persecuting Mr. Canadian so it could get the numbers and throw away the Anti-Gay Bill currently before the House of Honourables. Osono exhibited gross impotence as they failed woefully to counter the Zu-za propaganda.
There were rumours of vote-buying on both sides of the political aisle. But the haste with which projects were executed raised concerns about the genuineness of the government’s intentions, thereby generating negative publicity for the ruling party.
Voter apathy, the main enemy of every incumbent political party running for re-election, also reared its ugly head in Assin North. One need not be in Assin North to tell that there is a strong apathy towards the ruling party.
I laughed when I heard one Osono big man say that all hands must be on deck to combat voter apathy because political appointees and party executives cannot do it alone. It is very true that they cannot do it alone. But since they greedily cook and eat the meat alone, they should be ready to wake up alone in the middle of the night to attend to nature’s call.
You can perceive anger in my tone, right? Once again, your nephew is struggling to get a party ‘big man/woman’ to help him get scholarship for his living expenses after obtaining an annual full tuition waiver of more than USD 30,000 for his doctoral programme at a university in the US. I keep on asking myself as I did in 2019, “Is the Elephant worth dying for?”
Sorry for the little digression; I needed to vent at our party big men and women to make them aware that many of us are suffering in silence. And the anger of the masses may spell doom for the party in the 2024 polls.
The upstaging of Chief Alan at the last rally in Assin North is an episode that should never repeat itself. Such petty indiscretions tend to make it difficult to foster party unity after an acrimonious internal contest.
Chief Alan deserves commendation for continuing his speech as if nothing had happened. Only few politicians are able to survive upstage and continue with their speech.
Brings to mind how Trump upstaged Ted Cruz at the GOP conference when the senator had publicly refused to endorse him. Cruz has since not recovered from that embarrassing episode.
It is my prayer that those riding the Elephant learn some useful lessons from the Assin North defeat. If they’ve learnt nothing at all, they should learn that voter apathy would be the party’s greatest threat to ‘breaking the eight’. I hope ‘the powers that be’ are listening!
See you next for another interesting ‘konkonsa’ Deo volente!