Chairman Wontumi Is a Political Prisoner” – Minority Defends NPP Chairman, Questions Court Judgment

[00:00:00]And we will be judged ready by whether the emergency Chairman Wontumi is a political prisoner.

[00:00:10]Ladies and gentlemen of the media, this a statement of the parliamentary minority caucus on the judgement of the High Court Accra in the case of the Republic versus Bernard Antwi Boasiako and Akonta Mining Limited.

[00:00:32]Ladies and gentle gentlemen, some judgements settle a case.

[00:00:39]Others test a nation.

[00:00:42]Ghana will be judged in years to come not by the sentence handed down in Accra yesterday, but how uh but by how faithfully we defended our constitution in the aftermath.

[00:00:59]We speak today on behalf of the minority caucus in response to the judgement convicting the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, Mr. Bernard Antwi Boasiako, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, and Akonta Mining Limited.

[00:01:23]We speak not as advocates for one man, but as custodians of the constitutional order.

[00:01:32]It must apply equally to every Ghanaian regardless of political stripe.

[00:01:39]The New Patriotic Party has already issued its own statement on this matter, expressing profound disappointment, insisting no evidence showed that Wontumi unlawfully assigned his mineral rights.

[00:01:59]And calling the conviction a travesty of justice.

[00:02:05]We do not repeat that statement here.

[00:02:08]We in the minority we do not repeat the statement here.

[00:02:15]And nothing we say duplicates it.

[00:02:20]We speak instead for our own constitutional duty as the minority in Parliament to interrogate the conduct of the state wherever the public interest demands.

[00:02:34]Before we turn to the law the word for the human beings at the center of this to Chairman Wuntumi to his family to the New Patriotic Party in the Ashanti Region and to our party at home and abroad you are not alone.

[00:02:56]And your pain is a shared one.

[00:03:00]Grief and anger are natural in a moment like this.

[00:03:06]The best tribute we can pay Chairman Wuntumi right now is a resolve.

[00:03:14]The minority will do whatever is lawfully and properly within its power through Parliament and through public advocacy to see that justice is done.

[00:03:29]And that the defects which have robbed the judgment of its legitimacy are corrected.

[00:03:37]Let us be equally clear about where we stand on the law itself.

[00:03:44]We hold the judiciary of this republic in the highest constitutional regard.

[00:03:52]We do not impugn justice Kokouvi Tay personally.

[00:03:58]And we invite no one to disrespect this judgment.

[00:04:04]We support accountability.

[00:04:08]We support the vigorous prosecution of illegal mining.

[00:04:13]A scourge that has degraded our rivers and endangered the livelihoods of generations yet unborn.

[00:04:23]We seek immunity for no one on the basis of the fact.

[00:04:29]But four serious defects run through this case and each deserves nation's full attention.

[00:04:48]First, the denial of a counsel of choice.

[00:04:54]We understand that judgment was delivered despite the absence of John Peter Mensah lead counsel, whose office had notified the court of a prior professional engagement abroad.

[00:05:10]Article 19 of our constitution guarantees every accused person a lawyer of their own choice.

[00:05:18]choice. And that guarantee may only be displaced in the most exceptional circumstances.

[00:05:27]This country once built a decade of political outreach around and suddenly this question.

[00:05:36]In the trial of Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, that case ended in 2016 with the court of appeal acquitting Mr. Tsikata and condemning the trial's conduct by name as a miscarriage of justice.

[00:05:54]If that standard mattered in 2016, it matters today.

[00:05:59]Regardless of whose name sits on this charge sheet.

[00:06:05]Second, the refusal to refer serious constitutional questions to the Supreme Court.

[00:06:14]Article 130 reserves constitutional interpretation for our highest court alone.

[00:06:23]Instead, the trial judge decided for herself that section 99 2B of the Minerals and Mining Act was, in her own words, "clear and unambiguous."

[00:06:39]Our own Supreme Court has already condemned exactly this maneuver.

[00:06:46]In the Zanatta case of 2016, the court quashed a High Court ruling for wrongfully assuming jurisdiction over a constitutional question.

[00:07:00]It ought to have referred.

[00:07:04]The parallel here is exact, not merely similar.

[00:07:11]And on that authority alone, this judgment reflects a miscarriage of justice correctively on appeal.

[00:07:22]Third, and perhaps most vulnerable of all on the law, is how the court pierced a Konkola Copper Mines Limited's corporate veil to convict chairman Mutumwa personally.

[00:07:38]Since Salomon and Salomon in 1897, a company has been a person in its own right, separate from its shareholders and directors.

[00:07:56]Our own Supreme Court affirmed and suddenly the principle in Walkers versus Kuma, that piercing is permitted only where a company is a sham, a vehicle for fraud, or built to dodge an existing legal duty.

[00:08:20]None of that was found here.

[00:08:22]I could tell my name was incorporated in 2010.

[00:08:26]Its lease was granted in 2021.

[00:08:30]The conduct alleged came later still.

[00:08:34]There was no obligation yet in existence for the company to dodge.

[00:08:40]What the court found was untidy governance, not fraud.

[00:08:46]An untidy governance is no license to erase a company's legal existence.

[00:08:54]Worse still, the judgment convicted Wutume and the company separately on separate counts, using reasoning that treats them as one and the same.

[00:09:09]A court cannot dissolve a company to convict the man, and then reassemble it, fully intact, to convict the company, too.

[00:09:23]And all of it was unnecessary.

[00:09:27]If the evidence showed Wutume personally directed unlawful mining, ordinary criminal law already covered him as a principal or an accessory without touching the company's separate existence at all.

[00:09:47]Left uncorrected, this reasoning threatens every founder led business in Ghana from the smallest family enterprise to the largest.

[00:10:01]Fourth, selective justice.

[00:10:05]In July of last year, the Attorney General directed an investigation into the NDC's own national organizer, Mr. Joseph Yamin, and his vice chairman, Mr. Yakubu Abanga, over allegations of illegal mining.

[00:10:25]Months later, there is no comparable update on charges or trial dates.

[00:10:41]A sitting government member of parliament has publicly acknowledged overseeing a mining site.

[00:10:58]Let me take it again.

[00:11:04]A sitting government member of parliament has publicly acknowledged overseeing a mining site taken over from its lawful owners with no prosecution to date.

[00:11:19]And an NDC member of parliament charged over an anti-galamsey clash was granted bail within days.

[00:11:29]This pattern, taken together, sustains a reasonable perception that the machinery of the state moves fastest and lands hardest others when it is pointed at the political opposition.

[00:11:49]A government serious about ending selective justice must prosecute its own with the same vigor that has shown here.

[00:11:59]These four defects matter far beyond this one case.

[00:12:05]A democracy survives on the confidence of the losing side that the rules of the game are fair.

[00:12:14]If trial courts may sidestep constitutional referral, deny counsel of choice, and stretch veil piercing beyond recognition, whenever it is convenient, then no citizen's rights are secure, whatever party they belong to, and public trust in institutions that must outlive any single administration is corroded.

[00:12:48]We therefore call on the Attorney General to publish the state's enforcement record on illegal mining across the political spectrum.

[00:13:00]We call on the Court of Appeal to scrutinize the denial of counsel, the refusal to refer, and the veil piercing with equal and unflinching rigor.

[00:13:15]We call on the judiciary to reaffirm the threshold for constitutional referral with express regard to the Supreme Court's own decision in the Zanetor case.

[00:13:32]And we call on all Ghanaians of every party to insist that the standard which cleared Mr. Chigater's name in 2016 be demanded with equal conviction today.

[00:13:50]Let us be clear about what this statement is not.

[00:13:56]It is not an attack on the judiciary as an institution.

[00:14:02]It is a call for consistency, for constitutional fidelity, for a justice system that inspires confidence across the political divide, and not merely within it.

[00:14:19]History will not remember this moment for the length of sentences. It will remember whether Ghana, when tested, chose to defend the constitution for everyone, or only for the power of the day.

[00:14:37]We choose everyone.

[00:14:39]We choose the constitution, and we will be judged rightly by whether we meant it.

[00:14:47]Che Ma Wu to me is a political prisoner.

[00:14:53]Thank you very much for your attention.