Media must be circumspect not to derail the peace - Okudzeto

Mr. Sam Okudzeto, a legal practitioner on Tuesday cautioned the media, especially the radio stations, to guard against people using their network to make provocative statements, which have the tendency to derail the peace of the country.

He said the country was at a critical stage and as such the media and the people must be circumspect about what they said or put out there.

Mr. Okudzeto was speaking at a stakeholder forum on the Proposal for Amendment of the Criminal Offences Act, Act 29 of 1960, especially section 208, which deals with the law of causing fear and alarm.

The forum, which was organised by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWF), was aimed at soliciting inputs from various stakeholder organizations to the proposed amendments.

Mr. Okudzeto said even though freedom of speech was essential to the current democratic dispensation, people must be cautious about the things that they said or published in the media.

Mr. Kofi Abotsi, a lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) who made a presentation on the proposed amendment to Section 208, said the continuous application of the current Act and the prevalence of other remnant provisions in the Act had proven increasingly problematic with the coming into force of the 1992 Constitution.

He said the enforcement of the Constitutional provision on free speech and expression, had meant that laws criminalizing expression including speech had to be re-examined and aligned to conform to the requirements of the new regime.

He said the proposed amendments to section 208 differed from current law in some material and fundamental respects

Mr. Abotsi said the proposed amendment heightened the degree of responsibility on the prosecution and that the statutory defence contained in subsections two of the provision deals with the “mens rea” of the person accused of the offence and separates that from the effect of the publication, circulation among others. He added that the amendment also aimed to remove certain words (like fear, alarm and rumour) whose prevalence in the law can lead to difficulty of compliance and application.

He said other speech related crimes such as section 280, 281, 282, 283 and 284 of the Criminal offences Act that deal with publication of obscene material, offences relating to obscenity, indecent inscriptions, getting others to do acts punishable under section 282 and advertisement as to venereal disease declared indecent, have all been proposed for amendment.

Mr. Abotsi, however, explained that section 233 of Act 29 which deals advertising reward for the return of stolen property, had been recommended to be repealed given the fact that any such reward when given was without prejudice to the Police embarking on their own investigations and subsequent prosecution in this regard.