By Cameron Duodu
Koo, if I tell you we are in trouble, will you believe me?
– It depends on what sort of trouble you’re talking about? I mean if I wake up with only GH¢100 in my pocket, I do think I’m in trouble. But someone else may hitch his “trouble-sum” a bit higher – like say, 1,000! But that self-same person may think he’s in trouble because someone he – er- er – (coughs) you know, is not “picking” his calls….
– Ho, you call that “trouble”? That’s just one man’s headache! When I speak of trouble, I mean something that can affect everyone in this country, from Walewale to Wirenkyiren, and from Aboadzi to Abodom.
– Ei, something like an earthquake?
– Even earthquakes are limited to specific localities, the most vulnerable of which are known as epicentres. What I am talking about is something like a total eclipse of the sun!
– Eh? You think something like that has spread its wings over God’s Own Gold Coast?
– Okay, Koo: do you know how many articles have appeared on the Internet about the “Montie Trio”?
– Do you think I am stupid enough to waste my time counting such things?
– It may not be such a waste of time. It would indicate to you, the psychological state of the country in which you have invested so much time and resources.
– Ah?
– You say “AH?” Listen: if you Google “Montie Trio” alone, you get ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT THOUSAND entries! And remember they became known as the “Montie Trio” only recently. At first, they were referred to merely as the “contemnors” (57,300 entries)…
— You’re kidding me?
– No, I jest not! Google says that as many as 185,000 people have taken the trouble to sit at a computer and write something about the “Montie Trio Contemnors!”
– Now, suppose someone came from the moon and asked you who the “Montie Trio Contemnors” were, what would you say?
– That they are three so-called panelists on a show on Montie Radio who filled with the sort of omnipotence that’s often self-bestowed by people who believe they have political power, recounted with sadistic glee, how three judges and an army officer were killed on 30 June 1982 over a judicial issue. They warned the Supreme Court Judges of today not to forget what happened that day, and to not dare to overturn the wishes of the Electoral Commission on what names should remain in the Electoral register…
– That was all?
– Yes. Because of names in the electoral register, they went nuclear-ballistic!
They threatened Supreme Court judges with a gruesome death on account of the names of people whose voting intentions they did not even know??
– Not only that– one of them threatened that the Chief Justice, who, as you know is a married woman, would be forcibly “married” to someone else on the day of “revenge”!
– And there are people in Ghana who consider that this is a subject matter upon which so much breath should be wasted?
– Yes. By now, the figure of computer entries on the subject may have risen to 200,000 and over!
– It’s bonkers, I agree.
– Academics have had their say. Some say “free speech” must not be fettered by judicial “tyranny”, in the form of punishment for contempt of court
– You mean these academics are happy to live in a country in which vulgar verbal radio terrorists can threaten the Lady Chief Justice with rape?
– Koo, I am not surprised at the academics. They can always be depended upon to say that there are “two schools of thought” (if not more) on any subject under the sun! What has shocked me is the fact that two lady Ministers have found it possible to append their signatures to a petition urging their own President to pardon the verbal terrorists.
– In other words, they do not regard the threat of raping the Lady Chief Justice as a reprehensible enough crime to merit a prison sentence amounting to a mere four months, that may be reduced if the prisoners are of “good behaviour”?
– Yes! Only Shakespeare can do “justice” to this situation:
O judgement,
Thou art fled to
Brutish beasts
And (wo)men have lost their reason!
My heart is on the Bench there with the CJ
And I must pause till it come back to me!
– You see, Koo, the action of the two lady Ministers is characteristic of a trend in this country at the moment that enables otherwise respectable persons to close their eyes to any wrong-doing, so long as it occurs in the political realm. I am sure that neither of the lady Ministers would want their brother, or their son, or their husband (if any) to use such uncouth words laced with terrorist propensities, to apply to any other woman. But when it comes to politics, then the Chief Justice becomes a mere wooden object (of the type cited in the Twi proverb: “If [the wound] is on someone else, it’s as if it were on a piece of wood!”). Even feminist solidarity need not apply–
– Yes. And Koo, this case, which in every civilized society, would be an open-and-shut one, is what the Mighty Ghanaian intellect is exercised about?
– Yes – Forget about galamsey!
– Forget about dumsor and single-source contracts!
– Forget about the lack of democracy at the local government level.
– Talk, talk and talk again, about petitions to the President; about contempt of court; and about the exercise of freedom of speech.
But flay anyone who uses freedom of speech to say that our body politic has gone absolutely bananas!