Despite admitting that he is not a legal practitioner nor law erudition, Joseph Yamin had made a mockery of a claim by Lawyer Morris Ampaw that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) cannot go to court to challenge the outcome of the just ended elections.

Mr Yamin, a former deputy minister of Youth and Sport, questioned that on what basis a lawyer in the calibre of Mr Ampaw Esq will would jump the gun, to say the NDC cannot go to court to challenge the declaration of election made by the Electoral Commission Chair, Jean Mensa.

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The former deputy minister under the erstwhile Mahama Government in an exclusive interview with this reporter, Saturday, December 12, 2020 in Accra, said he was finding it very difficult to come to terms with Mr Ampaw’s claim since it lacks logic.       

He contends that “Morris Ampaw saying that NDC cannot go to court because of A, B or C… and I am surprised, this is coming from a lawyers of his status. For the fact that we are challenging the result doesn’t mean that the next day we are going to court.

“The processes of going to court is not just a day. I am not a lawyer so I would not assume that I know more than he knows. But the point is that when elections are declared, there is a certain number of days that one can challenged it and if you don’t do that and it goes beyond that specify days, then you have no basis of going to court.”

He argued that the NDC are within that period and are gathering information, putting figures together and evidences together to make a strong case before the people of Ghana that the elections were not free, fair and transparent.

Mr Yamin added that if a lawyer with many years of practice and experience would be making statement such as this, then “what are we teaching the people who seeing us as mentors and people who are aspiring to be like us and learning from us.”

He went on to say “if people like Morris Ampaw can shut up it going to be good for their own images and help Ghana’s democracy. Let open up our democracy to every test because it is when you test the system that is when you are going to get the best out of it.”

The deputy minister said the challenge with this year’s election is that the figures produced by the Electoral Commission clearly do not add up and yet people who are supposed to know better are not looking at that angle.

“Is that how we want our Democracy go? If the Americans that we are copying, if the British that we are copying did this, do we think that we will be using them as a case study to say that we want to gets to their point, no,” he laments.

According to him, people like Mr Ampaw should shut up and let the system work, adding “if we go to the court and the court decides otherwise it is our decision to take another step or to back out.

“And, as it stands now we think the evidence available to us indicate that Nana Addo cannot be declared a winner and we are respecting the right of the people by saying that we are going to court, they should respect our right of wanting to go to court and stop making unnecessary and unfounded statements.”

By Dede Akutu Adimer