A
member of the legal team of the
jailed Montie FM three, George Loh, has commended President John Mahama for
pardoning his clients.
Mr
Loh told Joy News the President has acted appropriately.
“The
President has acted rightly. We are grateful to the President and also to the
members of the Council of State for acting in line with the petition we
submitted and hearing our cry and our prayer,” he said.
President
Mahama on Monday remitted the four-month sentence given the three, Alistair
Nelson, Godwin Ako Gunn and Salifu Maase, alias Mugabe, who have already served
one month of their sentence.
Godwin
Ako Gunn and Alistair Nelson scandalized the court when they threatened to rape
and murder judges during a political talk show on a pro-NDC radio station,
Montie FM.
Mugabe,
moderator of the political talk show, fueled the hate comments according to the
court.
The trio believed the Supreme Court did
not rule justly when it ordered the Electoral Commission to delete names of
National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) card registrants from the electoral
roll.
The
NHIS card had been ruled out as legitimate proof of citizenship by the Court in
an earlier ruling.
A statement signed by the Minister of
Communication, Edward Omane Boamah, said the President’s decision to remit the
sentences of the contemnors was taken firmly in consultation with the Council
of State.
“The
decision of His Excellency the President to remit their sentences on
compassionate grounds follows a petition submitted to him by the contemnors
appealing to the President to exercise his prerogative of mercy even as they
continue to express deep remorse and regret for the unacceptable statements
they made against the Judiciary,” the statement said.
Meanwhile
another member of the legal team of the three convicts says his clients
deserved the pardon, despite widespread criticism of the President’s pardon as
a usurpation of the Judiciary’s powers.
Godwin
Edudzi Tamakloe says “Like any Ghanaian, we are entitled to this prerogative of
mercy and the President had to exercise it.”
“The
action taken by the President cannot in the remotest sense by any shred of legal
reasoning or imagination amounts to a slap in the face of the judiciary,” he
adds.
Source:mjjoyonline
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