Montie 3: Mr. President, Please Don’t Touch This!!

In 1982, this country experienced a horrific incident. Three High Court Judges and a retired Army Officer were abducted from their homes in the middle of the night and murdered in cold blood. A few days later, their charred bodies were discovered in Bundase shooting range. A Special Investigations Board (SIB) was set up to investigate this and the rest as they say is history. It was one of the darkest moments in Ghana’s history.

About two decades later, a Martyr’s Day was instituted to honuor their memory and this country vowed ‘NEVER AGAIN’. It is therefore criminal and outrageous for anyone to go on air, on the eve of Martyr’s Day to threaten the lives of judges and the Chief Justice. It is criminal to threaten another person’s life, whether that person is a commoner on the street or the Chief Justice or the President of the Republic. That is the reason why the Montie 3 deserve the punishment given them and it will be politically inexpedient for the President to invoke Article 72 of the 1992 Constitution to pardon them.

Yes, the President has that right to exercise his prerogative of mercy granted him under Article 72 of the Constitution to pardon the three. Right now, the President is under intense pressure from his party hierarchy and the rank and file to pardon the three.. I am however certain that he will not yield and allow the sentences to run their course.

Usually Presidential pardons are invoked following certain trends: 1.) Frequently, those pardoned are often sentenced to a longer prison term and they must have serve part (normally a substantial part) of that sentence. 2.) Presidential pardons are often timed to coincide with national anniversaries or special holidays e.g. Independence day, Republic Day, Christmas or Easter. 3.) They are also invoked sometimes when a President is leaving office.

Hardly are Presidential pardons invoked to free people as soon as the Judiciary hands out a sentence as the NDC hierarchy and rank and file are demanding that the leader of the party do. That will be construed as an attack on Judicial independence. Some have described any such potential move on the part of the President would be scandalous and that no serious president would ever consider that. I am sure the current president would never grant the Montie 3 pardon unless he wants that to be his last act in office and that he has already conceded defeat in December’s elections.

As elections approach, the political tensions in the country are too high and we all, as responsible citizens owe it a duty to be careful about our utterances when we mount a platform. It is utterly irresponsible for people to go on air and make such dangerous statements. We have the examples of Rwanda and Kenya to guide us. We must guide against HATE SPEECH. In Rwanda, it all began with people going on air to call for the killing of “cockroaches”.

Kenya’s electoral violence also started with hate speech calling for killing of political opponents and people from certain tribes. Crimes against humanity have been committed as a result of contemptuous comments like what was said by the Montie 3. God forbid, Ghana cannot and must not be allowed to go the way Rwanda did some 20 years ago. Sanity must prevail and if it takes stiff judicial punishment to remove inflammatory statements from the radio waves so be it.

Some have described the sentence given to the Montie 3 as being too harsh. I disagree. I am sure the Court took into consideration the fact that they were remorseful and many pleaded for mercy on their behalf. Imagine If someone goes on air to threaten the life of the president of the Republic, It’s damn outright criminal and such a person may be charged with a bigger crime and get a longer sentence. So what these guys did were outright criminal and as the presiding Judge said, the Attorney General should have realized the criminality of their offence and brought charges against them. Why the Attorney General failed to do that is baffling.

The reason I think is that because we run a broken system. It is alleged that Woyome still owes us three years after the Supreme Court ruled that he must refund the judgement debt wrongfully paid to him. We have SADA, GYEEDA, Bus Re-branding issues to content with. How much money have we lost as a nation through all these and many other scandalous misappropriations and corrupt practices? Where are the prosecutions?

Every year the Auditor General makes adverse findings against individuals and organizations and recommends prosecution. How many of these embezzlements are prosecuted? How much of these embezzled funds are recovered? The simple reason is that, the Attorney general is sleeping on the job and because we run a broken system of governance, no one is being hold accountable.

The Montie 3 deserve what they got. Allow them to serve their time in jail in peace and let it be a lesson to all that HATE SPEECH will not be tolerated. No one has the right to threaten another person’s life.

Ben Ofosu – Appiah,
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.