Come again, Mr Manasseh Azure

Dear brother,

Your letter to President John Dramani Mahama is emotionally charged, theatrically indignant and carefully calculated to create the impression of a country descending into tyranny. Yet beneath the flourish and moral grandstanding lies a deeply flawed argument riddled with contradictions, dangerous assumptions and a troubling disregard for the very constitutional principles you pretend to defend.

You claim to be a defender of free speech. Fair enough. Every democracy needs vigilant voices. But free speech is not synonymous with immunity from the law. Freedom of expression does not abolish responsibility, neither does it place citizens above lawful scrutiny where allegations of false publication, incitement or deliberate misinformation arise.

That distinction is precisely where your entire argument crumbles.

You accuse President Mahama of presiding over a supposed assault on free expression merely because individuals have been investigated, arrested or prosecuted under existing laws passed by Parliament and interpreted by courts of competent jurisdiction.

Yet in the same breath, you demand that the President “call the security agencies to order,” intervene in ongoing matters and somehow influence the conduct of investigations and prosecutions.

What exactly are you advocating?

Because what you are describing is not democracy. It is executive interference.

One moment you lament abuse of power; the next moment you are openly inviting the President to interfere with constitutionally independent institutions merely because the accused persons happen to belong to the opposition. That is astonishing.

Under Ghana’s constitutional order, the President is not an imperial ruler who picks up a phone to terminate investigations because journalists or activists are uncomfortable.

The Police Service, national security apparatus and judiciary are not meant to operate according to the emotional temperature of public commentary. If there is abuse of process, the courts exist precisely to address it.

And by your own admission, many of these cases collapse in court.

That alone demolishes your thesis.

It proves the system is working.

It proves suspects are not being marched before firing squads or condemned without recourse. It proves judges retain independence. It proves accused persons have access to legal remedies. It proves due process still exists.

But apparently that is not enough for you.

You would rather the President step in extrajudicially and direct security agencies on who should or should not be investigated. Ironically, the very conduct you would have condemned as authoritarian under another administration is exactly what you are subtly demanding today.

Your selective outrage is equally revealing.

Where was this passionate constitutional purism when reckless propaganda, deliberate falsehoods and coordinated political disinformation polluted the national space for years? Where was this alarm when reputations were maliciously destroyed online, fabricated claims spread recklessly and public panic manufactured for partisan gain?

Democracy cannot survive on the doctrine that political speech is exempt from accountability merely because it is uttered by opposition figures.

No serious nation operates that way.

The law on false publication was not invented by President Mahama. It exists within Ghana’s legal framework and remains subject to judicial interpretation. If there are concerns about its application, then the remedy lies in legal reform, constitutional challenge and judicial review — not emotional blackmail directed at the President.

Your attempt to personalize every action of state institutions to Mahama himself is intellectually dishonest.

You say: “The buck stops with you.”

Politically, yes. Constitutionally, no.

A President appointing officials does not mean he micromanages every operational decision they take. Otherwise, every acquittal, every failed prosecution and every judicial embarrassment must equally be laid at his feet. You cannot selectively invoke presidential responsibility only when it suits your narrative.

More dangerously, your piece creates the false and incendiary impression that Ghana has descended into dictatorship merely because some opposition activists have encountered the law. That is reckless exaggeration.

People are arrested every day in democratic societies. Politicians are questioned. Journalists are investigated. Citizens are prosecuted. The critical issue is whether due process exists, whether courts function and whether accused persons have rights.

In Ghana, they do.

Your comparison to military rule is therefore not only absurd but insulting to victims of actual authoritarian regimes where dissenters disappear, media houses are shut down permanently and courts become ceremonial ornaments.

Ghana is nowhere near that reality.

Indeed, the greatest irony in your piece is this: you were able to publish an explosive public attack on the sitting President without disappearance, censorship or state retaliation. That fact alone annihilates the dystopian picture you are desperately trying to paint.

The truth is simpler than your melodrama allows.

What some people really seek is not freedom from oppression, but freedom from consequences.

A democracy governed by law cannot function on that basis.

President Mahama would betray the Constitution far more gravely if he descended into ongoing investigations and ordered security agencies to stand down merely because politically connected commentators disapproved. That would be the real abuse of office.

The rule of law demands something more difficult than outrage. It demands restraint. It demands institutional independence. It demands that allegations be tested in courtrooms, not adjudicated through emotional newspaper prose masquerading as constitutional wisdom.

You are entitled to your opinions, Mr. Awuni.

But your argument, stripped of rhetoric and sentimental nostalgia, amounts to little more than this: that the President should interfere with lawful processes whenever opposition figures are involved.

That proposition is untenable, dangerous and profoundly anti-democratic.

Yours faithfully,

Kasise Ricky Peprah