The Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has urged Parliament to serve as the guarantor of press freedom in the country.

He said deliberations in the House must send a message to every Ghanaian that their voices mattered, their rights were sacred, and that Parliament stood ready, willing, and resolute in its defence of both.

“Let Ghana continue to be that nation. Let this House, regardless of political persuasion, stand as one voice in defence of the liberties that generations of Ghanaians have fought and, in some cases, given their lives to preserve,” he said.

Squander reputation

Delivering a statement on free speech, civil liberties, and the rule of law in Ghana on the floor of Parliament last Friday, Mr Afenyo-Markin said Ghana had come too far and paid too high a price for the freedoms the people enjoyed to allow them to be quietly diminished in moments of political convenience.

“Mr Speaker, Ghana has built its reputation painstakingly, and we are looked on across Africa as a model, a proof of concept, that democracy can take root and flourish on this continent.

“Other nations have drawn encouragement from our example. International partners have invested in us, precisely because we have consistently demonstrated that our institutions are stronger than any individual administration. We must not, in a moment of political temperature, squander what generations laboured to build,” he said.

Tolerate criticism

The Minority Leader said that history had shown, at great cost, that the suppression of political speech had never served the nation well.

He said governments that stifled dissent did not strengthen themselves but rather hollowed out the very institutions on which their own legitimacy depended.

“A democracy that is healthy enough to tolerate criticism is a democracy strong enough to endure. And a government confident enough in its own mandate has no need to fear the voices of those who disagree with it,” he said.

He said what was happening in the country currently went beyond partisan politics.

Democracy

He told the House that the country's democracy was among the most celebrated on the African continent.

Mr Afenyo-Markin said Ghana had earned that distinction through decades of sacrifice, civic vigilance and an unrelenting commitment to constitutionalism.

He explained that the right to free expression, enshrined in Article 21(1)(a) of the Constitution, was a birthright.

“It is the oxygen of democracy and when that oxygen is restricted, the body politic begins, quietly and dangerously, to suffocate.

The MP for Effutu pointed out that it was now a matter of public record that a number of citizens, members of the opposition New Patriotic Party, had been arrested in circumstances that had unsettled civil society, alarmed the legal community and provoked anxiety among the Ghanaian public. 

Reckless statements

Contributing, the Majority Leader, Mahama Ayariga, condemned reckless statements by some people in the country.

He particularly reminded the House that part of the genocide in Rwanda was attributed to reckless speech that incited one tribe against the other and demonised one tribe.

He said it was a speech that normalised the killing of one tribe.

Mr Ayariga said it was a reason why, as far back as 1960, Ghana’s Criminal Offences Act made it very clear that “you cannot make such statements in this country."

He, therefore, condemned statements that called for the killing of the president and the beheading of his wife.