The Speaker of Parliament Professor Mike Oquaye has declared the Fomena seat as vacant.
This follows the New Patriotic Party’s petition to Parliament and subsequent engagements by the President and leadership of the party for the incumbent MP, Andrews Asiamah to step down as an independent candidate for the impending December 7 elections.
Addressing the matter in Parliament on Saturday, the Speaker said: “having forfeited his 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. Going by a purposive interpretation of the current law, consultative actions on the part of the MP are important. To all intents and purposes, he is no longer a member of the party, he has pronounced himself publicly as an independent and has filed his papers to compete against the party and its candidate as an independent candidate on December 7, 2020.
“On that occasion, this parliament will still be operating as an official parliament of the republic of Ghana. We shall not have a situation adopted freely by any sitting MP when he/she will be campaigning freely against the party which he or she still represents in parliament and yet ridiculously stands against the party. No purposive interpretation of law will allow such ridicule to prevail”.
Meanwhile, the embattled MP said he has already decided to contest the seat and there is no turning back.
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