SALL: Tsatsu Tsikata engaged in a ‘useless, frolic’ exercise – Kwaku Azar

Professor Kwaku Asare, a US-based Ghanaian lawyer has offered that the lawyer representing the residents of Santrokofi, Akpafu, Likpe, and Lolobi (SALL) missed the plot in his quest to have the Supreme Court injunct the gazetting of John Peter Amewu as the Member of Parliament for Hohoe Constituency.

Kwaku Azar, as he is widely known, contended in a Joy News interview that the crux of the matter is not the legitimacy of Amewu but the disenfranchisement of the people of SALL.

He noted that the quest for the injunction was a ‘needless’ venture as it does not form the basis of the SALL issue.

Revealing what he believes should be the focus of Tsatsu Tsikata, who is the lawyer for the SALL residents, Kwaku Azar said that the argument should be centred on a press release by the Electoral Commission on the eve of the 2020 general elections.

He noted that the EC, in that directive which he considers to be unconstitutional, promised to create a new constituency for the SALL people after the elections.

“The Hohoe issue was a legal frolic with no consequence with respect to the issue. What the Court was deciding was whether or not the injunction issued by the Ho High Court should be allowed to stand and the court quashed that injunction and the review panel upheld that injunction.

“That injunction in my mind was needless to start with. They are not attacking the right problem. The right problem is that on December 6, 2020, the EC issued an unconstitutional directive to the people of SALL stopping them from voting. As a result of that unconstitutional directive, the people of SALL are currently on a no-man’s-land. They are not seated in parliament in violation of all the fundamental human rights we need to cherish and that is the problem that we need to fix,” he said.

Kwaku Azar said that the lawyers for SALL must use the court, parliament or any other means possible to have the EC fulfil its promise to the SALL residents.

There is an easy solution because if you look at the directive by the EC on December 6, it promises SALL a new constituency which is the Guan Constituency. The question then is why after the promise of December 6 and we are in March, the EC is yet to act on activating this constituency so that the people of SALL can vote.

A seven-member review panel of the Supreme Court on Tuesday, March 30 upheld an earlier decision by a five-member panel of the court which quashed a ruling by the Ho High Court which prevented John Peter Amewu from holding himself as MP.

Kwaku Azar says the ruling will not stop people like himself to continue the fight to have the people of SALL represented in Parliament.

The fight for the right of SALL to be in Parliament has not even started so to talk about the end of the road was premature.