'Freeing Montie trio will be Mahama's own funeral' - Okudzeto

A former president of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), Mr. Sam Okudzeto has cautioned President John Mahama against heeding calls to invoke article 72 of the constitution and grant the convicted Montie 3 pardon.

Alistair Nelson, Godwin Ako Gunn, and Salifu Maase, aka Mugabe, who have become known as the ‘Montie 3’ were handed a four-month imprisonment by the Supreme Court for contempt on Wednesday July 27. They threatened the lives of judges on an Accra-based radio station called Montie FM.

The office of the president has been inundated with several calls from both executives and supporters of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) as well as Ministers and appointees of the presidency, for Mr. Mahama to intervene, since, in their view, the sentence was “harsh”.

The pressure on the president to free the three has resulted in the formation of the Freemontie3now Movement, as well as the organisation of a night vigil, and the opening of a petition book to collect one million signatures to coerce the president into granting the three pardon.

However, Mr. Okudzeto, speaking to Class News, said the president will be planning his own funeral if he gave in to the pressure mounting on him.

“They threatened judges, which is a criminal offence, they [Attorney General] 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 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,” Mr. Okudzeto added.