‘You May End Up In Prison But You Will Keep The Seat’- Muntaka Assures Gyakye Quayson
Former Minority Chief Whip, Muntaka Mubarak has empowered his colleague James Gyakye Quayson by saying he will still maintain the Assin North seat even if he is jailed.
Mubarak who envisions a great win for Gyakye Quayson in the upcoming by-election on June 27, 2023, explained that whether the ruling favours his fellow or not, he is very confident that he will emerge as the winner to continue his developmental projects in the constituency to improve the lives of his people.
“I have told him ‘Chief’, you may end up in prison but you will keep the seat’, Muntaka noted.
James Gyakye Quayson
Making reference to how predecessors who fought for the independence of Ghana were imprisoned, he cited that the “late Dr Nkrumah was in prison when he became a Member of Parliament.”
According to the Asawase MP, he has been preparing Mr. Quayson for this day since he was the Minority Chief Whip.
“He is used to a system where the system works for everybody. I mean you could predict how things could happen and he comes into a system where you cannot predict anything and it’s like initially he gets almost depressed so to prepare that person for him to get to where he is, believe me, if this thing had happened within the first 6 months when he became a Member of Parliament, maybe it will be a different thing”.
“But it happened at a time that he is really prepared mentally for it. And you heard him saying that even if you like to get me a room in the court where I have to be sleeping in the court for the trial I will still win. That is all we needed for him to be mentally tough and be ready to go through all the hell that he may be put through but will still win the seat,” he added in an interview monitored by The Ghana Report on Joy.
When asked whether it was constitutionally impossible for Mr. Quayson to keep the seat even in prison because once you are convicted, you cannot keep the seat, Mr. Muntaka replied in the negative.
According to him, he was present in the House during former President Kufuor’s era, when an MP was incarcerated.
He said the House appealed over the matter, adding that the former MP kept his seat during the appeal until he was pardoned.
For this reason, he believes that “next week Tuesday, Gyakye Quayson is going to keep his seat”, adding that “they can do their worst.”
The Central Regional Director of the Electoral Commission (EC) has announced that three aspirants will be contesting in the upcoming by-election.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate Charles Opoku will be the number one on the ballot paper, the Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG) candidate Bernice Enyonam Sefenu occupying the second position on the ballot and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate, James Gyakye Quayson will be the third candidate on the ballot paper.
Aside from Muntaka who has publicly declared his support for Gyakye Quayson, many party officials are doing the same. The party’s flagbearer John Dramani Mahama, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, John Dumelo, and others have been in the Constituency campaigning to have James Gyakye Quayson re-elected as the Member of Parliament.