Qualification not criteria for MP – Vicky Bright

Vicky Bright, a former legal advisor to former President John Agyekum Kufuor and Minister of State, has said that qualification is not a criterion for being a Member of Parliament (MP) on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

According to her, both the party’s constitution and rules and regulations are silent about the qualification.

She stated that there is also no rule which demands that details of a person submitted to the vetting committee during nominations for primaries are everlasting.

Mrs. Bright was under cross-examination in the case in which she is seeking to set aside the outcome of the party’s primary that elected Ahmed Arthur as the parliamentary candidate for the Okaikoi-South Constituency.

She noted that Ahmed’s behaviour regarding the fact that the MP left out certain claims about his qualifications on his nomination forms portrays him as a “criminal.”

The former legal advisor claimed that at the vetting of the aspirants for this year’s elections, it was made clear by the chairman of the vetting committee of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that Ahmed had omitted qualifications he had stated in his previous nomination forms.

She argued that the Okaikoi-South MP was specifically questioned about that by Mr. Osei Adjei, the chairman of the committee, insisting that Ahmed expressed anger when confronted with the issue, “causing some rowdiness.”

This, she claimed, “smacks of fraud which is a crime,” she told Egbert Fabille Jnr, counsel for the MP, in a court presided over by Justice Daniel Mensah.

Mrs. Bright stated that Ahmed had told the committee chairperson that the issue had already been dealt with in 2011 and that qualifications were not a requirement in the party’s constitution.

Sitting continues today.

Mrs. Bright petitioned the party to disqualify the incumbent MP for allegedly forging his certificate from the Ghana Institute of Journalism, an action that led to the postponement of the primary in the constituency.

But the party’s Appeals Committee threw out the petition and set Sunday, August 2, 2015, for the election.

The election was riddled with injunctions as Mrs Bright challenged the educational certificates the incumbent submitted to the committee.

Mrs. Bright subsequently withdrew from the primary on Sunday, August 2, 2015.