Those who did not experience the culture of silence and how those dared challenge the status quo during the junta days can have a feel of it today.
When the coercive powers of the state are brought to bear upon an individual, individuals or a political party democracy is under threat.
That was what played out during the PNDC days a period in the country’s history when freedoms were curtailed.
Within eight or so months of the life of the current political administration in the country many have been arrested and detained because they uttered remarks deemed to have the capacity to cause fear and panic or defamatory to certain persons holding high positions.
Special squads, masked and hiding their facial identities, have been busy since the anomaly commenced. They have seen action in the storming of the residences of the former Finance Minister, former Bank of Ghana Governor among others.
Those who thought it was out of excitement and exuberance of a new government and would soon fizzle out got it wrong. It is continuing with reckless ferocity.
Our rating in the press freedom chart is witnessing a downward spiral and it is unsurprising.
How did the former President Akufo-Addo manage the verbal recklessness of NDC hounds when they spewed all manner of sometimes unprintable remarks on radio about him? He simply did not order the arrest of those making the remarks.
We recall some of these persons wishing for the then President to die in an aircraft crash. Nobody went after them even as they threatened to cause a national strife.
Today remarks which come nowhere near what transpired during the tenure of the previous President are being criminalized when they should be considered misdemenour and treated as such.
The image of the law enforcement department of the state has suffered a major dent and therefore lost the confidence of the public.
The reason is not far-fetched…manipulation from the corridors of power is at the centre of it and if the trend continues we would be as a nation saddled with a national security challenge of unimaginable magnitude.
State institutions must be allowed to work in consonance with the laws establishing them. Only then can we claim to be growing as per the tenets of democracy.
For now we cannot lay claim to such standards. All of a sudden things are falling apart and remarks in the media can attract masked national security operatives in residences.
Pleasing the appointing authority should not be an obsession of the police chief as well as other security agencies. The constitutional tenets underpinning their operations should be the guiding principles.
Those who threatened to kill the Minority Leader in Parliament are above the law and would not be arrested because their party is in power; others whose party are not in power get arrested even as their freedoms as suspects for suspected misdemeanour are denied them.
If the trend of arbitrariness persists and media freedom continues to witness such degradation it would take a long time to repair the damage being done Mother Ghana. Now we understand what the flagship NDC ‘reset agenda’ is all about.
