Make way for constructive criticism – Manasseh Azure Awuni tells Judiciary

Freelance investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni has chastised the Ghanaian judiciary over the attempts to gag the media.

In a post on his Facebook timeline, the journalist asked that if intellectual works on the judiciary cannot be tolerated then “what should we do?”

He observed that those who cross the line with their criticism “should be dealt with, but the judiciary must make way for constructive criticism”.

Manasseh Azure Awuni recalled when the judiciary compelled Prof Raymond Atuguba in 2018 to shelve academic research he had conducted on the voting pattern of Supreme Court judges on political cases because the judiciary did not take the findings lightly.

“This was an attack on academic freedom. The Ghana Bar Association and others were quiet. Today, the court is extending it to the media,” he wrote.

The Judicial Service of Ghana, through its lawyers, Sory@Law, has written to media houses that have published “hateful, spiteful, vengeful and incendiary” comments about the Justices of the Supreme Court hearing the election petition of former President John Mahama, to “pull or cause to be pulled down and cleared from your platforms”, all such statements and speeches.

The Judicial Service is also demanding that those media houses, as well as all others, “prevent the publication of such statements and speeches on your platforms”, and “forthwith, exercise the highest level of discernment, discretion and responsibility insofar as the publication of statements and speeches regarding the administration of justice is concerned”.