The story of how a Techiman based nurse and mother of three (including a 4yr old) Salomey Bafoh Awiti was picked up in the middle of the night by national intelligence officers and has been remanded for two weeks on suspicion that she is abetting the publication of false news is very worrying to read.
This is not the Ghana we want to build. I can assure Ghanaians that when given the opportunity, our intelligence agencies will not be reduced to chasing citizens for insulting the President or anyone else.
I have always disavowed a politics of insults and will remind all in the political space of the need to be decorous. The ideas we need to transform our nation won’t come from insults. But I also remind the NDC government that any infringement on the right to free speech pushes our democracy backwards. Free speech, as unpalatable as it may be sometimes, is the foundation of our democracy.
Even more worrying, is the government’s continuous selective applications of our laws. Some citizens can insult and walk freely and others are jailed because the government doesn’t like the target of their insults.
Please release Salomey Bafoh Awiti and others who have been similarly charged and jailed.
God bless our homeland Ghana and help us to resist oppressors rule!
