Subin MP, Wontumi contempt case adjourned July 28

A motion on notice before a Kumasi High Court seeking an order for committal for contempt against the Electoral Commission (Ashanti), the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi Boasiako, and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Subin, Eugene Boakye Antwi, has been adjourned till July 28, 2020.

The action, by some 51 delegates of the Subin Constituency, is for alleged contemptuous and deliberate acts and conduct calculated by the respondents, including Patrick Acheampong, Ashanti Regional Director of Research and Election, the Subin Constituency Chairman, Michael Adusei Bonsu, and his Secretary, Akuamoah Boateng, to bring the administration of justice and authority and dignity of the court into irreparable ridicule, contempt and public ridiculing.

The respondents are said to have organised the primary at the Subin Constituency on June 20, 2020, with the full knowledge of a legal suit instituted by the applicants on June 18, 2020 against the conduct of the polls.

The suit, among other issues, including the delegates’ album, sought a declaration that the unilateral indefinite suspension of the plaintiffs by the defendants with the intention to disenfranchise them in the June 20 polls was illegal, unlawful and wrongful.

The sitting MP had claimed he retained his seat with 485 votes against 166 votes by Joseph Boakye Danquah, the main contender who did not participate in the elections in the face of the injunction order.

In an affidavit in support of the application for committal for contempt, Isaac Nimako, the first plaintiff applicant and deponent, on behalf of the 50 other applicants, while the EC complied with the restraining orders by the court, the lawmaker of Subin (third defendant), Eugene Boakye Antwi, indicated that injunction or not there would be an election, even when the EC had drawn the attention of the defendants to the injunction.

According to the deponent, the defendants openly declared that since they evaded personal service of the injunction order, they would contemptuously go ahead with the conduct of the primary, and showed themselves to be persons above the law and, therefore, not law-abiding citizens, thus bringing the administration of justice into disrepute, since they were in full knowledge of a valid court order.

The affidavit stressed that the defendants intentionally, knowingly, deliberately, and willfully perpetrated the illegal and unlawful act of contempt to bring the unquestioned and awesome authority of the court in contempt.

The Kumasi High Court (4), presided over by His Lordship Justice Charles Wilson, yesterday, adjourned determination of the case to July 28, 2020, as the motion on notice had not been duly served on all respondents who were also not in court save the Constituency Secretary, Akuamoah Boateng, the sixth respondent.

The judge reminded Lawyer Addai, counsel for the Electoral Commission (EC), the first respondent, to advise the Regional Electoral Officer to appear in court in person, noting that his (EC) non-representation in court was in itself contemptuous in a contempt case seen as quasi- criminal.

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