Source: newsthemegh.com
Dr. Michael Kpessa-Whyte has “sincerely apologized” to Ghana’s Supreme Court for a tweet that, in his words, was intended for the US Supreme Court but was mistakenly attributed to Ghana’s by Ghanaian media.
Following a summons to appear before Ghana’s Supreme Court to show cause why he should not be held in contempt for calling the court “stupid,” the former Shai Osu Doku parliamentary aspirant of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) said he nonetheless takes full responsibility for his tweet and extended an unqualified apology to the court.
On the heels of the Ghana Supreme Court’s ruling that the election of Mr. James Gyakye Quayson of the Assin North constituency was unconstitutional, the Research Fellow with the History and Politics Section at the Institute of African Studies (IAS) tweeted.
Dr. Kpessa-Whyte stated in his tweet from Friday, May 19, 2023: “They have succeeded in turning a Supreme Court into a Stupid Court. Nowadays, common sense is a rare commodity.
He stated: “Party politics in the administration of justice is a significant factor in the demise of democracies.”
“Our judges need lessons in political philosophy and ethics,” he continued.
Following various suggestions, Dr. Kpessa-Whyte tweeted once more to unlink his initial tweet from Ghana’s Supreme Court.
Thank you to everyone who inquired about my tweet from May 19, 2023, he said. To be clear, I keep up with legal rulings across the globe, thus the aforementioned tweet cannot be attributed to Ghana. It more closely relates to events occurring abroad, including in the US. We are members of a global village.
The Supreme Court mandated that Mr. Gyakye Quayson’s name be removed off the list of MPs in a unanimous ruling.
On May 17, 2023, the court ruled that Mr. Gyakye Quayson’s election as the MP for Assin North was unlawful.
After the Cape Coast High Court invalidated Mr. Quayson’s election as the MP for Assin North in July 2021, a resident of Assin Bereku in the Central Region, Mr. Michael Ankomah Nimfa, brought him before the court to prevent him from continuing to hold himself out as an MP.
The petitioner had argued before the Supreme Court that James Gyakye Quayson had violated the Constitution by continuing to hold office notwithstanding a High Court ruling that had invalidated his election and was unfair to the residents of Assin North.
At the time he submitted his nomination papers to run in the 2020 elections, Mr. Quayson was found by the Cape Coast High Court to have had loyalty to a nation other than Ghana.
The troubled MP had appealed the high court’s ruling to the Supreme Court.
“I sent out a tweet on May 19, 2023, at 9:59 am, that shared my reflections on insights from a book by David A. Kaplan (2018), “The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court’s Assault on the Constitution,” and recent attempts by some Democrats in the US to increase the number of Justices at the Apex Court from nine to thirteen,” according to a retraction and apology statement released on Thursday, May 25, 2023.
As stated on the face of the summons to show cause, “I have observed that Ghanaweb and other media publications sought to associate my tweet with the decision of the Supreme Court in the Assin North matter, but honestly, at the time of my tweet, I had no knowledge of the Supreme Court’s decision as at 9:59am when I did the tweet.”
“The said tweet has resulted in the invocation of the powers of the Apex Court in our country for me to appear and show cause, because the tweet has scandalized the Apex Court of our country and has brought the dignity of the court into disrepute,” the lecturer said.
Sincerely, I did not post the tweet with the intention of scandalizing or demeaning a prestigious organization like the Supreme Court of Ghana, which I really respect and admire. Although I accept responsibility that I should have used greater judgment in my word choice, these are repercussions I never meant, he also admitted.
He said: “Please allow me to state unequivocally that I have no reason to disparage our Supreme Court, and I hereby sincerely apologize unreservedly for any pain and discomfort my tweets may have caused the Chief Justice, the Supreme Court, and the entire judiciary. I hereby retract the tweet in question; as a result, the tweet has been deleted entirely and I pray for forgiveness.”