Montie 3: Okudzeto's 'Mahama funeral' remark serious - Adams

The comment by Mr. Sam Okudzeto that freeing the Montie trio will be President John Mahama’s “own funeral” is worse than the comments that landed the contemnors in jail, Mr. Kofi Adams, National Organiser of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has said.

After the incarceration of Alistair Nelson, Godwin Ako Gunn, and Salifu Maase, aka Mugabe, to a four-month jail term, several supporters of the NDC and ministers of state have signed a petition pleading with Mr. Mahama to pardon them.

Mr. Okudzeto, however, disagreed with the pardon calls when he spoke to Class News recently over the matter. “They [the contemnors] threatened judges, which is a criminal offence, they [Attorney General’s Department] refused to prosecute the people and now should he [Mr. Mahama] free them that is going to be his own funeral. …What lesson will he be telling the people of Ghana; that if people commit a criminal offence, because they are his party people, therefore, he should go and pardon them? Is that a proper way to administer the pardon? That is my view.

“If he wants to do it, he should go ahead and do it, but they forget we are all in Ghana; it is not just me,” Mr. Okudzeto had stated, stressing: “People have threatened to kill judges, which is a criminal offence, which is there in the Criminal Code, and the Attorney General has not prosecuted them and he [President Mahama] wants to go and pardon? He should go ahead and pardon them because his party people want it, his party chairman said it, but as for me, I will not be a party to it.”

Reacting to Mr. Okudzeto’s comment on Class91.3FM’s mid-day news 12-Live on Tuesday, August 2, Mr. Adams told Naa Dedei Tettey that: “Somebody says that if you take an action, you are preparing your funeral. When is a funeral organised? Is it not after death? And how can anybody tell about the funeral of the commander-in-chief [of the Ghana Armed Forces] because he is being called upon by citizens to invoke a constitutional provision?”

“They are not asking him to do anything illegal. They are only appealing to His Excellency the President that the constitution we all voted for in 1992 gives you [President] a responsibility and that we are calling upon you as Ghanaians to apply it, and someone says … doing so will mean that you are preparing your funeral, I don’t think that it is better than what has landed the three gentlemen in jail.

“I don’t think also that the life of a judge is also more important than the life of another Ghanaian. The president is supposed to be the number one citizen and if a threat or something that people said in a way, according to them, destroys the image or reputation of the court and that will land them in jail, then we are more than convinced that this is equally a threat on the life of His Excellency the President and we do expect the institutions to investigate. It is even more serious because it is not coming from just an ordinary person, it is coming from somebody who understands the law, who is a lawyer, who has once served as president of the Ghana Bar Association, and so he should understand even better than this.”