By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 31, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
It is increasingly becoming embarrassingly clear that a whopping half of Ghana’s estimated 27 million people may be totally bereft of a conscience and may also be clinically retarded. This is clearly borne out by the fact that the raging national debate over the 4 months’ prison term, apiece, handed down by the Supreme Court has almost wholly centered around the right of the so-called Montie Three, namely, Messrs. Salifu Maase, Alistair Nelson and Ako Gunn, to unfettered free speech, even speech that endangers our national security, crudely disregarding the fact that even in the most advanced of Western democracies, such as Canada, Australia, France, Germany and the United States, free speech is inextricably coupled with both legal and moral responsibilities.
Almost every one of the critics who have weighed in on the controversy against the Supreme Court’s conviction and sentencing of the Montie Three, including a remarkable number of cabinet appointees of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has not made a single reference to the country’s media laws, the fundamental basis upon which the conviction and sentencing of the three men was based. And yet, these critics feel so smug and self-righteous in their ungodly cause of prevailing on President Mahama to nullify the Supreme Court verdict. Some critics who ought to know better have even raised obtuse questions over whether the sentencing of the Montie Three to 4 months’ imprisonment was not arbitrarily informed by naked revenge.
What is even more striking about the debate surrounding the sentencing of the Montie Three, as poignantly observed by my good friend Mr. Sydney Casely-Hayford, is the cringing insight which it provides into the abject disrespect of nearly every left-leaning Ghanaian partisan for the civilized rule of law and order. The latest of such moral reprobates to the democratic rule of law and order to sign onto the presidential petition seeking to have the Supreme Court verdict on the Montie Three summarily nullified is Mr. Bernard Mornah, the notorious NDC surrogate and Chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC), one of the four, or so, splinter Nkrumaist political parties (See “Pardon Montie 3 in the Name of Free Speech – Mornah” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 7/31/16).
For those who are just “tuning in” to this column and subject, we have just learned that at least one of the convicted Mahama shills had threatened to rape Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood who, at 69 years old, may be the same age as the parents of the Montie Three convicts. This may be what has prompted some of the left-leaning critics of the Supreme Court to cynically suggest vengeance as the underlying motive behind the sentencing. To be certain, if anybody had threatened my late mother with rape or any form of physical violence, I would have blown out the brains of that SOB without thinking twice about it.
But here also, it is significant to highlight the fact that the bestial misogynistic language of violence is standard vocabulary among the rank-and-file membership of the National Democratic Congress. Which is why even publicly avowed human and civil rights advocates like Nana Oye Lithur, the Minister of Gender and Social Protection, would sign onto the presidential petition seeking to have the Montie Three pardoned and immediately released from the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison. Other Mahama cabinet appointees who have signed onto the presidential petition seeking the release of the Montie Three are Ms. Hanna Tetteh, Ghana’s Foreign Minister, and Mrs. Elizabeth Ofosu-Agyare, the Culture and Tourism Minister.
That nearly every one of the Mahama cabinet appointees who have signed onto the presidential petition seeking to nullify the Supreme Court’s conviction and sentencing of the Montie Three is a professionally trained lawyer, ought to give us great cause for concern.
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