The Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye, has declared the Fomena parliamentary seat vacant.
The declaration by Speaker Oquaye follows an application to him by the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the first-term lawmaker to be removed from the House for filing as an independent candidate in the general election slated for December 7.
The NPP in October wrote to Speaker Oquaye to sack Mr Andrew Amoako Asiamah from Parliament and declare his seat vacant because once he had decided to go solo, he “automatically forfeits” his membership of the party and, for that matter, his seat in the Legislature.
Ruling on the petition in Parliament in Accra on Saturday before the House rose for the general election, Speaker Oquaye said the Member of Parliament (MP) could not remain in the House after relinquishing his membership of the governing party.
“With all intents and purposes, he is no longer a member of the party. He has pronounced himself publicly as an independent candidate and has filed his papers to compete against the party as an independent candidate on December 7, 2020.
“Having forfeited the membership of the party on whose ticket he was elected to parliament, the operative language of the constitution is that he shall – which is mandatory – vacate his seat in Parliament,” he ruled.
According Speaker Oquaye, it would be absurd that a “sitting MP will be campaigning against the party that he/she represents in Parliament”, opining that “no purposeful interpretation of the law will allow such ridicule to prevail.”
The ruling, Professor Oquaye said, was in line with the Constitutional provisions “which Mr Asiamah subscribes to”.
Article 97 (1)(g) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana states that “A Member of Parliament shall vacate his seat in Parliament if he leaves the party of which he was a member at the time to join another party or seeks to remain in Parliament as an independent member.”
But in response to Speaker Oquaye’s earlier letter dated November 5 to enable him to make “a reasoned decision” on the matter, the embattled lawmaker said the grounds on which the Speaker sought to declare his seat vacant, as requested by the governing party, were unfounded.
He argued that, “I have not resigned from office as Member of Parliament. I have not left the party I was a member of at the time of my election to parliament to join another party [and] I have not in any way sought to change my party allegiance as a Member of Parliament.
“I hope it is obvious from the above that I am not vacating my seat in Parliament,” Mr Asiamah stated, expressing confidence of victory at the polls.
BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI
