Renowned legal practitioner, Lawyer Martin Kpebu has criticised the ruling of the High Court that the criminal case against the ousted Member of Parliament (MP) for Assin North, James Gyakye Quayson, should be heard daily.
Speaking in a TV3 interview monitored by GhanaWeb, on Monday, June 18, 2023, Martin Kpebu could not comprehend the rationale behind the ruling of the court.
He was amused by the fact that the court regards the Gyakye Quayson trial as urgent but it has allowed the case of former Chief Executive Officer for MenzGold, Nana Appiah Mensah (NAM1), which affected millions of Ghanaians, to go on for more than three years.
“It struck me when they said that Gyakye Quayson’s trial would be heard daily and NAM1’s case has been adjourned for the 35th time. It just summed everything up.
“Because NAM1 whose case has affected millions of our citizens, has caused people so much pain, disease, etc, that one is not no urgent. It is this one (the Gyakye Quayson case) that is urgent.”
The High Court in Accra, on Friday (June 18, 2023), ruled that the ongoing criminal trial of ousted Assin North Member of Parliament, James Gyakye Quayson, will be heard daily starting from Tuesday, June 20, 2023.
This was after the presiding judge, Justice Mary Maame Ekue Yanzuh, turned down an application for the trial to be adjourned till after the by-election.
The Court has since fixed June 20, 21, and 23 for the trial to continue.
Quayson was recently ousted from parliament after the Supreme Court of Ghana ruled that he was ineligible to contest in the 2020 parliamentary election because he failed to renounce his Canadian citizenship in time.
But there is still one case the former MP has to face in court after the Office of the Attorney General accused him of deceiving public officers to acquire state documents.
On February 12, 2022, the State charged James Gyakye Quayson with five counts; deceit of a public officer, forgery of a passport, knowingly making a false statutory declaration, perjury, and false declaration.
Source: ghanaweb.com
