The Munitie3 pardon misses a larger point

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

August 29, 2016

Clearly, the Muntie3 argument is not about the President’s constitutional right to pardon. Constitutionally, the President can pardon a loaf of bread. The problem for him would be to explain the optic and the ethics of the pardon.

So it is with the Muntie3 case and more.

It starts with how partisan the publicity surrounding the case has been. Those who advocate for pardon have the same party colors. And those against are aligned under another.

The larger issue, however, is to what extent are we willing to advocate for sanity in a politically charged country such as ours; and not about party colors or loyalty to fellow ideologues.

If you have been to the Supreme Court lately, you might have seen statutes of the martyred judges at the foregrounds of the court. They are there for a purpose: a purpose so glaringly obvious that it is hard to understand the reasons why some are advocating for the pardon.

Why this pardon granted is so “glaringly obvious” a mistake can best be illustrated by a story  I just rread.

Once every month a laborer at a nursery that specialized in exotic plants pushed a wheelbarrow past the security gate. And every time, the security officer stopped him for rigorous inspection, highly suspicious of the activity, but found only straw inside the wheelbarrow.

Several months and many wheelbarrows later, the laborer retired. The security officer, hoping to learn something new, promised the laborer immunity if he would tell him the truth about what it was all about.

“What were you stealing all these years?” The guard asked.

“Wheelbarrows.” The laborer said.

Right under the nose of the guard, wheelbarrows of the nursery were being stolen but the guard, expecting something else, never connected the act to the charge of robbery.

To a similar extent, the president has missed the odious nature of the Montie3 utterances.

We can, therefore, assume that the lesson implied in the murder of the judges in 1982, displayed valiantly at the Supreme Court foregrounds, obviously has fallen on deaf ears or is being ignored.

The sad part of this episode is that the murder of the judges took place under the watch of an antecedent regime of the same party in power today. And it is this party’s leader that is the president who is granting the pardon.

The Muntie3 had threatened to kill judges, the protectors of the constitution. Despite the incendiary nature of the threat, this president is using the same power of the constitution to grant them pardon.

The right to grant pardon lies within the President’s constitutional authority. But the consideration of this right also implies a larger thought that goes beyond the fact of a mere pardon.

That consideration is to protect the state, not to shill for partisan interest.  For most, the decision to grant the pardon is partisan.

But some partisans in support have argued that the process leading to the arrest of the Muntie3 was flawed. Flawed, they argued, mainly because the arrest was not done by the police on the order from the Attorney General’s office.

Under the above argument alone, the president acquires, at least, two additional problems. First, for failure to provide an administration that acts appropriately under circumstances like the Montie3 case; and second, the inherent appearance of using the pardon to cover the negligence.

Or was the negligence deliberate in order to kick in the pardon?

And even if the negligence wasn’t deliberate what would the president do next to cure the evidently flawed process caused by his own administrative services?

There is more to cure in that direction.

Consider this.: The Muntie3 are adults. They are media professionals, or at least passing as such, which means they must understand the limits of freedom of speech in as much the same way as the president must understand the limits of a presidential pardon.

Apparently, both don’t.

The present danger in the presidential pardon is that it may give rise to nihilist tendencies such as exhibited in the killing of the judges in 1982.

It must also be noted that we live in a society that is prone to foolish acts;  the perpetrators then asking later and gaining sympathizers in the process for pardon on the basis of compassion.

Thus, the Muntie3 pardon has brought us to a point of the bizarre. Not only does it mock the killing of the judges but it also reveals the lack of seriousness we bring to our affairs of state.

That the Munite3 did not act professionally must be obvious. They are not alone in this respect. And the lesson must not end with the pardon.

What we have in the media in Ghana today, at many levels of broadcast or print, is a far cry from what ought to be at this stage of our development.

For, in a saner, more literate society, many of the conversations and features we have in our media would never have the chance for publication or broadcast. The Muntie3 fracas is a perfect example.

In spite of the presidential pardon, a “larger cause” must prevail. It is the need to preserve the sanity of our society, which the Muntie3 has abused.

We must not allow the nihilist to roam free.

This is not a job for political parties alone. It must also involve the very people of the media professions. To them, the message is, please don’t allow the amateurs among you to cheapen the profession.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, August 29, 2016.
Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted at a website, email a copy of the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com . Or don't publish at all.