A GROUP calling itself Mass Action for Change has expressed its dissatisfaction over President John Mahama’s decision to grant remission to the Montie trio.
The three were released Friday August 26, this year following President Mahama’s remission of their prison sentence.
The three: Salifu Maase aka Mugabe, Alistair Tairo Nelson and Godwin Ako Gunn, were sentenced to four months’ imprisonment with a fine of GH¢10,000 each for contempt of court
The three were sentenced on July 27, 2016 after threatening the lives of judges of the Supreme Court during a live programme on Montie FM, a pro-NDC radio station based in Accra and served only a quarter of the sentence.
According to Mass Action for Change, the President failed to realize that though he has the right to Prerogative of Mercy as stated in article 72 of the 1992 Constitution, he ought to have exercised that power devoid of personal and partisan interest as observed in the Montie FM trio case which had stirred national debate, especially among members of the opposition political parties who feel the President’s decision was a mark of gross disrespect for the independence of the judiciary.
The Group said in a statement signed by its Convener, Emmanuel Amankwaa, Communication Director, Citizen Henry Aboagye Augustine, Operations/Intelligence Director, Kenneth Offei and Research Officer, Richard Mensah, respectively, said “the same constitution grants the independence of the judiciary and as such could declare null and void any decision of the legislative and executive.”
The Group said “we at Mass Action for Change categorically accentuate that the President of Ghana has willingly thrown the spirit, letter and clauses of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana to the gutters, with no respect for the very arm of government whose Head had sworn him into office as the 4th President of Ghana in the Fourth Republic.”
The Group has therefore called “…on the President to reconsider his decision and save Ghana from this irreparable international debacle he has plunged us into,” lamenting that “the constitutionally approved interpreters of the 1992 constitution have been immeasurably disrespected, appalled and rubbished by the President of Ghana who also exerts his powers from the same constitution.”
BY Melvin Tarlue