Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Monday, August 01, 2016
More ministers and some appointees of the National Democratic
Congress (NDC) government are putting pressure on President John Mahama to
grant amnesty to the three party activists who were convicted for contempt by
the Supreme Court last week.
The appointees have been lining up at the premises of Radio Gold which also houses Montie
FM at Laterbiokoshie, Accra, where the convicts broadcast their hate
remarks, to append their signatures and force the president to invoke the clemency
clause in Article 72 of the 1992 Constitution.
Key ministers that have already signed the petition
include Prof. Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang (Education), Nana Oye Lithur (Gender Children
and Social Protection), Elizabeth Ofosu Agyare (Tourism, Culture and Creative
Arts), Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa (deputy Education), Felix Kwakye Ofosu (deputy Communications),
Benjamin Dagadu (deputy Energy and Petroleum), Benita Okiti Dua (deputy Fisheries) among others.
Appointees like Valerie Sawyerr, former deputy Chief of
Staff at the Office of the President, and others have signed; former Attorney
General Betty Mould Iddrisu, now a vice chairperson of the NDC, has also given
her endorsement.
Even maverick politician, Akua Donkor, has also been
there to sign the petition; and there were unconfirmed rumours that the pen she
used to append her signature was even turned upside down.
Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, who calls himself a founding member of the
opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) but acts like an NDC activist, also went
to Radio Gold premises to support the
convicts who had constantly attacked his party’s flagbearer.
Interestingly, this same Nyaho-Tamakloe lambasted Kwadwo Owusu
Afriyie aka Sir John, then NPP General Secretary, when he (Sir John) was nearly
jailed by the same court for contempt during the landmark Presidential Election
Petition in 2013.
The book
containing the petition was opened by a group calling itself the Research and
Advocacy Platform (RAP), believed to have been formed by Felix Kwakye Ofosu.
The Convicts
The three convicts, Salifu Maase
aka Mugabe, host of “Pampaso,” a political programme on an Accra-based Montie FM, together with Godwin Ako
Gunn, 39 and Alistair Tairo Nelson, 41, apart from the four-month sentence each,
were ordered to pay GH¢10,000 each as fines or in default, serve an additional
month in jail for scandalizing the courts.
The NDC is reported to have paid the fines on their behalf, even
though the same party before the sentencing claimed, the contemnors were acting
on their own and not in the party’s name.
Mugabe had always boasted that he speaks to defend the president and
if because of Mr. Mahama he would go to jail, so be it.
Death Threats
The NDC communicators had threatened to kill the justices sitting on
an election-related case, thereby incurring their (Justices’) wrath and cited
them for criminal contempt.
Mugabe had told his panelists to ‘open fire’ on the justices and
they in turn did so with threats of death, in addition to allowing a certain
Nash of Mataheko to ‘marry’ Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood.
The Attorney general has refused to press criminal charges against
the convicts, now called the Montie 3.
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