Freedom for the Montie Three: musings, meaning and implications
I have been deeply amused at the patently contrived consternation and anger dredged up by some of us on receipt of the news that President John Mahama had remitted the sentences of the Montie Three and ordered them freed.
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In this assemblage of opposition to the exercise of the presidential prerogative of mercy are lawyers, academics, journalists in active service or retired, pastors of all hues and beliefs, and political parties.
My amusement stems from the simple fact that apart from political convenience couched in inelegant legalisms, none of those who are against the exercise of mercy disagree with the existence of such presidential powers as spelt out in the Constitution, but rather with their exercise in favour of the Montie Three.
It is convenience and not principle which actuates their position. In short, neither the position nor its champions are to be trusted as true guides to serious and enduring political action, but as fairweather political wind vanes who have nothing to teach Ghanaians.
Let me attempt to dispose of some of their porous arguments in favour of a position which smacks of sheer vindictiveness, malice and abysmal lack of Christian charity. The first that comes to mind is the fact that the presidential remission was procured through an orchestration. Therefore, it was partisan and valueless.
If my memory serves me right, petitions and counter petitions are organised each year for and against parole in the respective American states for the convicts Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan and John Hinkley. Yes or no?
Charles Manson was convicted decades ago for the murder of the actress Sharon Tate and others in the 1970s, Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King and John Hinkley was committed to an asylum for attempted murder of President Ronald Reagan. Hinkley just got a reprieve to spend weekends with his mother. Orchestration is not an argument for opposing the prerogative of mercy in any instance. The reason is simple; this country is an active and functioning democracy which President Lincoln defined as government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is the duty of all public-spirited citizens to be actively involved in the decisions regarding public issues, and I believe it is the deeply undemocratic, elitist, sectarian strain in some of us which advanced this untenable argument of orchestration.
Freedom of speech
Secondly, from my vantage as a student of Ghanaian politics from independence to the present, I have read journalists in this country who are very much alive who preached fire and brimstone, death and mayhem upon all those who the powers that be at the time had declared as enemies of the people and who now claiming liberal, democratic credentials, are busy writing and speaking for the incarceration of fellow practitioners instead of exhibiting their liberal beliefs.
Freedom of speech is indivisible, and to pretend that it is not so is not good. You either believe in it or you don’t. If this is not vindictiveness and malice, I do not know what is.
Third and most important for us as a democracy, I continue to be puzzled by the suggestion that we must fear judges and the courts rather than revere them. There is a vast difference between fear and reverence in any polity. This is especially clear to me when the courts in this country are the creation of our Constitution, and the judges who man them are all appointed by whoever happens to be our President at any point in time.
The suggestion that an officeholder in the polity must be feared instead of being revered and respected sounds so militaristic, and tyrannical that I think some of us wish for the days of kangaroo courts, military tribunals and the like all abolished by our Constitution. A judge who is feared can only be feared because he or she practises cruelty in the courtroom. I sincerely hope that that is not what is being suggested here.
But another aspect of this suggestion is that judges are special people created by our Constitution. That is a flat lie. The only person whose office our Constitution has created and surrounded with legal and political rights and privileges is our President. I challenge any of our latter day scholars to advance a contrary view. In a democracy such as ours, the role played by the people in apportioning responsibilities is more important than the powers which go with those responsibilities. I am convinced that the doctrine of separation of powers undergirding the current frenzy about the pardon powers is a mere contrivance stemming from a fundamental misunderstanding of the English political system argued by Baron Montesquieu and accepted to this day in political thought but on that, a newspaper column is not the place to do justice to my beliefs.
Murder of judges
There is yet another strand of the fixation on judges which must be debunked. Yes three judges and a military officer were kidnapped and murdered in a manner which has scarred this country. This was in 1982. But in reality, no country can progress if past hurts and grievances must be recalled at all times to halt our progress on all fronts. In America, this is historically dubbed as ‘’waving the bloody shirt’’ of rebellion and secession, directed not only specifically at the Southern States which rebelled, but also at the Democratic Party after the American Civil War. The motto of Mfantsipim School, my alma mater, is ‘’Dwen hwe kan’’ that literally translates as think and look ahead which reinforces what I am saying. All that I am saying is that shouting wolf at every turn and twist of national politics is not the way to go unless we also believe that Ghanaians are incapable of learning from the past. Is that a realistic position to hold about Ghanaians?
Finally, I am further amused by the involvement of pastors of all hues in the matter against the remission by President Mahama. Already, some of these pastors have been condemned by me earlier in this column on their stance during the Guantanamo detainees’ issue. It is clear to me that these pastors do not believe in the Lord’s Prayer or in paradise where the crucified Christ promised the murderer after forgiving him. The Catholics among them also do not believe in the doctrinal plank of the church regarding confession and penance. I will love to know what they tell the faithful who come before them in the confessional box. Is it necessary for pastors at all to get involved in this? How is the work of the Kingdom advanced with such views? I just wonder. Meanwhile, welcome to freedom, Montie Three, and may decorum and decency attend the practice of your vocations.
