Mahama will lose - Montie FM's Mugabe

Ex-convict and political talk-show host of Accra-based Montie FM, Salifu Maase, popularly called Mugabe, has enmeshed the tenterhooks on which the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) currently sits, following his baffling affiliation with the bandwagon of Ghanaians who are eager to see President John Dramani Mahama thrown out of office in December.

An apparently ‘exploding’ Mugabe, on his late afternoon Pampaso programme last Wednesday, did not mince words in telling Ghanaians that he and some other leading members, who constantly defended the party, had been dumped.

The neglect of pro-NDC media, with specific mention of Radio Gold and Gold TV, was also cited as a reason for his call on the electorate to vote against the NDC.

According to him, media houses regarded as anti-NDC constantly enjoyed unwavering support from the NDC, in the form of advertisements, while those defending and supporting activities of the party were left to their fate.

Apart from that, he announced that some senior journalists known to be very critical of the ruling government had, without difficulties, laid their hands on luxurious vehicles and huge sums of money, at the neglect of those on whose backs, the party rode to victory.

“When power leaves you, then you will know the true power of the people… no radio adverts and no TV adverts for us. Keep giving adverts to the senior journalists,” he cried out, as he drew the attention of government appointees and ministers, who had all along being the target of his fury, to the hectic and dangerous nature of the job they were executing for the NDC.

He thus sent an early warning message to the party, saying: “You will get up one day and will not hear me come to sit here to defend the party again,” adding that: “Those ministers and appointees think the job is easy, but I can tell you they have not got that capacity to do what we are doing. What we do is a deadly job.”

Mugabe was one of the loud mouthed Montie panelists sentenced to prison for four months by the Supreme Court for contempt, in the matter of Abu Ramadan and Evans Nimako Vs the Electoral Commission.

When they were release by President Mahama after a month at Nsawam Prison, following a petition by NDC top officials, including ministers of state, Ghanaians held the notion that, they had been compensated, since their imprisonment was tied to party activity.

But Salifu Maase’s revelations depicted an entirely different situation. He stressed that: “The NDC did not give us anything, contrary to what Ghanaians were thinking. Our families have been neglected since we came out of prison.”

His continuous support for the party, in spite of the ill treatment, he stated, was due to the love he and some others had developed for the president as an individual.
He would thus wish the NDC loses the next elections, the party would learn its lessons the hard way.

Mugabe became a household name, when he and two others – Godwin Ako Gunn and Alistair Nelson, christened Montie 3, while on an NDC propaganda platform, on Accra-based Montie FM, threw caution to the wind and threatened to kill judges of the apex court, if they did not dissociate themselves from the matter in which a former General Secretary of the People’s National Congress (PNC), Abu Ramadan and Evans Nimako were challenging the Electoral Commission on the register to be used for this year’s polls.

For instance, Alistair Nelson made frightening statements as -“Today you want to sit there and use your left hands to point at things to destroy this nation, we know your homes. Mugabe, the High Court judges, I can stand at one junction and tell you where all of them live, or most of the influential ones live.”

Even though the three, who claimed not to be afraid to go to prison expressed remorse, but the court, on July 27, found them guilty of “scandalizing the court, defying and lowering the authority of the court and bringing the authority of the court into disrepute,” and subsequently sentenced them to four months imprisonment, in addition to a GHC10,000 fine each.

Not long after that, several petitions began to make inroads to the presidency, calling for their release. And a month later, President Mahama yielded to the pleas and granted them pardon.

A statement signed by Communications Minister, Dr Edward Omane Omane said the president took the decision in tandem with “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.”