Montie 3: Granting Mercy Plea Will Be 'Irresponsible' – Prempeh

Using Article 72 to free the Montie 3 from their four-month jail term will be “an irresponsible use of such power”, law professor, H. Kwasi Prempeh has said.

Prof Prempeh’s comment on Facebook follows the plethora of pressure mounting on the President to exercise his prerogative of mercy as captured in the 1992 constitution, to pardon radio presenter Salifu Maase, aka, ‘Mugabe’ and two radio panellists, Alistair Nelson and Godwin Ako Gunn, who have all been sentenced to four months in prison for threatening scandalising the Supreme Court and bringing it into disrepute as a result of death threats issued against justices of the court by the two panellists who appeared on Mugabe’s Pampaso political talk show on Montie FM a few weeks ago. They were found guilty of contempt and sentenced accordingly.

Apart from the jail sentence, each of the three contemnors has been fined a sum of GHS10000. The owners of the station including Mr Harry Zakkour, who is also the second vice chairman of the governing National Democratic Congress, as well as Mr Edward Addo, Ato Ahwoi, and Kwesi Kyei Atuah, have been fined GHS30,000 each. They are to pay the fine by the end of Thursday July 28 or risk jail term. The owners have also been asked by the Supreme Court to submit policy documents spelling out how to forestall similar happenings in the future. They have also been asked to ensure that none of their media outlets will be used to scandalise the court or bring it into disrepute.

Right after the sentencing, several groups and individuals started making arguments for the need for the president to free the three convicts. A group called Research and Advocacy Platform (RAP) has already started gathering signatures from citizens to support such a petition it intends sending to President John Mahama.

In a statement, RAP said though the need to uphold the integrity of vital state institutions like the Supreme Court was important, “We, nonetheless, believe that the four-month custodial sentence imposed on the three is excessive and has the potential to severely curtail the right to free speech, which is a fundamental right enshrined in the 1992 Constitution”. “We are consequently taking a number of steps aimed at mobilising Ghanaians of all shades of opinion to Petition the President to invoke Article 72 of the Constitution to offer the imprisoned three a reprieve from this harsh sentence. A Petition Book has been opened at the premises of Radio Gold at Laterbiokoshie and the Freedom Centre at Kokomlemle requesting abatement of the sentence and/or a Presidential Pardon,” the statement signed by Convener Abu Razak said.

Also, Constitutional lawyer, Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare, has said President Mahama must invoke Article 72 to arrest the Supreme Court’s “barbaric” and “arbitrary” use of its judicial power in the case. Also a former flagbearer-aspirant of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Arthur Kobina Kennedy, in a statement, said the justices of the Supreme Court who sat on the case were not impartial.

“Indeed, I am persuaded that the Supreme Court's handling of this case has brought it more disrepute than what was said on Montie FM. Impartiality is a central tenet of impartial justice. Regardless of how one feels about the Montie panellists and the others, the judges of the Supreme Court were not impartial in this case. By acting as prosecutors and judges in a case involving threats to their lives, they dealt a big blow to impartial justice in our country. Nobody would accept that a judge can sit on a case involving a threat to his wife or father. And they can sit in judgment of threats to their own lives?” the former opposition presidential hopeful asked.

The NDC itself has issued a statement condemning the sentence as “shocking” and “harsh”. Foreign Affairs Minister Hanna Tetteh also believes the sentence is “harsh”. Party supporters on Thursday July 28 massed up at the governing party’s Accra headquarters to mount pressure on the national executives to petition the president towards freeing the three, since they are known sympathisers of the NDC.

However, Prof Prempeh said in his post on Thursday that: “President Mahama must resist the political temptation to yield to calls on him to use his Article 72 pardon power to free the so-called Montie 3. Use of Article 72 in this instance will represent an irresponsible use of such power. The pardon power was not designed to be used in a blatantly and selectively partisan manner to undo judicial sentences meted out to party loyalists.

“All of this present brouhaha over the so-called Montie 3 has arisen because of the partisan refusal of the Attorney General and law enforcement to bring criminal charges and prosecution against the three. Having first abdicated responsibility for partisan reasons, the Government must not now compound the sin by setting a new and dangerous precedent in the use of the presidential pardon power--for still partisan reasons. Use of the pardon power in this instance will open the door to similar overtly partisan uses of the pardon power in future and in ways calculated to undermine directly the authority of the courts. It would mark a new low in our already contemptuous disregard for the rule of law. Not that any of this matters to these people anyway!!”