‘Enact law on contempt of court’

A legal practitioner, Mr Ace Ankomah, has called for the enactment of a law on contempt of court.

Such a law, he said, ought to give clear details of what constituted contempt of court, as well as spell out a punitive regime.

He said contempt of Parliament was regulated by an act which clearly spelt out what constituted an act of contempt against Parliament and what the ramifications were.

But for contempt of court, he said, as it currently stood, it was not codified into one law and did not stipulate any length of time for imprisonment, thereby leaving that power at the sole discretion of the judge.

Delivering an address at a symposium on the topic “Should there be any limit on what people say or write in the media?” organised by the Forum for Media Accountability and Democratic Governance (FORMADEG) and Occupy Ghana in Accra yesterday, Mr Ankomah said “free speech is not free if it is criminalised.”

Concerted effort needed 

Mr Ankomah said if it was a common view that the law ought to be changed, then it was necessary for all stakeholders to marshal the requisite effort to see that done because “the state of the law always favours the party in power.”

Mr Ankomah, who is also a leading member of pressure group Occupy Ghana, called for “a scrutiny of the law that criminalises speech and strives to strike a balance between free speech and commentary on court proceedings.”

According to him, the case for the enactment of a law on contempt of court came to the fore during the Election 2012 petition, during which the Supreme Court invoked the conservative tool of contempt and jailed some journalists for contempt.

For him, that was the opportune time for concerted efforts to have been made for a strong case for the enactment of a law on contempt but as the case was, “we all went to sleep until 2016” when it resurfaced in the Montie three case.

He said the remission granted to the three, which had culminated in a national brouhaha, could have been done in a way that would not have been seen as affronting the judiciary.

Explaining further, he said there was legal provision for the President to have had a fruitful back-door chat with the judiciary and even though the judges were on legal vacation, it could still have constituted a court to hear an application which would be granted for the three to be freed.

Maintaining archaic laws

Mr Ankomah said it was unfortunate that England, the originators of the law, had since repealed it and replaced it with an act but Ghana had chosen to maintain it.

“In 2013, England removed the law of scandalising the court, while we are still jailing people for scandalising the court,” he said.

A veteran journalist and politician, Ms Elizabeth Ohene, was of the view that it was time to take a second look at the powers of the National Media Commission (NMC), pointing out that the commission lacked the power to bite.

She said if the NMC had punitive powers, it would deal with some of the issues that had resulted in the courts imprisoning journalists.

Ms Ohene advised media owners “to take a second look at the people they employ as journalists and the kind of training they have had.”

Professionalism

Ms Ohene stated: “We need media practitioners who have a strong and broad basic education; people who make it their business to know everything. If they do not know the basics of the practice, how can they safeguard it?” 

The Managing Editor of The Ghanaian Chronicle,  Mr Ebo Quansah, said; “Freedom comes with responsibility and for that matter, if a group of people choose to sit on radio and make irresponsible statements, they ought to be made to face the full rigours of the law.”

He said the remission of the rest of the sentence of the Montie three was an affront to the rule of law and a “capricious use of power.”