A recent death threat issued by two radio panellists against justices of the Supreme Court is nothing “serious”, flagbearer of the Independent People’s Party (IPP), Mr Kofi Akpaloo has said.
“…It’s unfortunate that those guys at Montie FM made those comments. …I’ve also listened to those comments and I don’t think it’s anything serious,” he told Prince Minkah on Class91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show on Friday July 8. When pressed for clarity about his comment as to whether he really meant that threats were nothing serious, Mr Akpaloo said: “No”.
“What is more serious than asking a tribe to kill other tribes?” he compared, adding: “…As a lay man, I don’t see where you can criminalise them and jail them….”
In his estimation, Alistair Nelson and Godwin Ako Gunn were empowered to make those comments because of the failure by authorities and the judiciary to punish Assin Central MP, Kennedy Agyapong, who allegedly incited violence against Ewes, and Gas in the Ashanti region ahead of the 2012 general elections.
The Supreme Court has summoned the two panellists as well as the owner of Montie FM and the host of the talk show on which the threats were issued, to answer for contempt charges.
Mr Gunn and Mr Nelson have been widely condemned by Civil Society Organisations for threatening to eliminate the judges in similar fashion as their forebears were, in 1982, during the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) regime, if they plunged the country into mayhem by dint of their ruling on a case that pended before them about the credibility of the register of voters. They were arrested by the Bureau of National Investigations over the matter for interrogation, but the Bureau later issued a statement saying the two politicians lacked the capacity to carry through their threat. It claimed the threats were borne out of “needless bravado”.
However, security analyst Dr Kwesi Aning has described the statement by the BNI as one that risked emboldening others to act recklessly.
