Blame Bawumia For The Predicament Of Montie 3 � Koku Anyidoho

A Deputy General Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Koku Anyidoho has indicated his intention to drag Dr Mahamudu Bawumia to court for failing to provide further evidence to back claims that Ghana’s voters register contained many names of Togolese nationals. 
 
According to Mr Anyidoho, the opposition New Patriotic Party’s Vice Presidential nominee was to be blamed for the cause of the predicament of the Montie 3, who are spending four months in jail for contemptuous statements against the Supreme Court.

If Dr Bawumia had not initiated his call for a new voters register in which he provided "forged documents" to the Electoral Commission, all this episode would not have happened, Mr Anyidoho alleged.

He insisted that it was based on Dr Bawumia’s assertions that resulted in Abu Ramadan and Evans Nimako going to court during which the Montie 3 in their comments on the matters found themselves in trouble.

In separate radio interviews on Friday, Mr Anyidoho insisted he was lacing his boots to drag Dr Bawumia to court for him to justify his claims on the voters register.

To him, Dr Bawumia promised to provide more evidence to back his claims but for several months, that evidence was yet to emerge.

Besides, he accused the former Bank of Ghana Deputy Governor of forging documentation to deceive the Electoral Commission on his claims that Togolese nationals were on Ghana's register.

This, he deemed as a “deceit of public officer’ which was criminal and ought to be punished.

Responding to the claims, Mr Anthony Karbo, a Deputy Communications Director of the opposition political party said Mr Anyidoho has no basis for his argument and would only waste his time in court.

He said Mr Anyidoho wants to catch the eye of the President so as to be in his good books since he claimed there was a 'frosty' relationship between the former head of communications at the presidency and President Mahama. 

NDC throws weight behind pardon

Mr Anyidoho explained that the ruling party was supporting the petition for the president to pardon to the convicts and disagreed with arguments that a move of that nature would amount to bad precedent by the President.

“All the presidential pardons that has been granted, does that amount to bad precedent, why? We are only using the constitution.

Meanwhile lawyers for the three convicts have explained that they have settled the fine and that all the conditions ordered by the Supreme Court has been fulfilled.

“We have paid Ghc90,000 to the registry, complied with the order to provide the court with the measures instituted to prevent re-occurrence of the incident and have also sent a petition to President Mahama for a pardon.” Mr Godwin Edudzi Tamakloe one of the lawyers for the convicts said.

“It is like a prayer request from God and in the mean we are yet to receive a response”, he said.

Background 

The Supreme Court last Wednesday sent a strong warning to people who make irresponsible comments on media platforms by sentencing two radio panellists and a programme host to four months’ imprisonment each for scandalising the court.

The two panellists, Alistair Tairo Nelson and Godwin Ako Gunn, and the host, Salifu Maase, alias Mugabe, were also to pay GH¢10,000 each or in default serve an additional one month each in prison.

The two panellists, spurred on by Maase, threatened the lives of judges of the superior court, especially those who heard the case on the credibility of the country’s electoral roll filed by Abu Ramadan and Evans Nimako against the Electoral Commission (EC).

The trio, together with the directors of Network Broadcasting Company Limited (NBCL), operators of Montie FM, the radio station where the comments were made, and ZeZe Media, owners of the station frequency, were on July 18, 2016 convicted for contempt of the apex court.

They were found guilty of scandalising the court, defying and lowering the authority of the court and bringing the name of the court into disrepute.

The court, however, did not sentence the trio for the threat of harm and death that they made against the judges, explaining that that constituted another matter for another branch of government to take action on.