The Media Foundation for West Africa is calling for a nationwide debate on the law on causing fear and panic.
The organization says the law is a threat to the right to free expression in Ghana, and has already assembled some legal luminaries for an upcoming roundtable on the law.
The law which is under the criminal offences Act, of 1960 Criminal Code generated public debate some months ago after the police arrested some individuals and journalists whose comments in the media were deemed to have caused fear and panic.
One high profile case was when an NPP Social Commentator, Nana Darkwa, claimed on radio that Former President John Rawlings had set his house on fire.
He was arrested but subsequently discharged for want of prosecution. Another NPP Social Commentator was also arrested on May 24 2010, during a radio programme in Kumasi after describing President John Mills as a Chimpanzee.
Due to public outcry, that case could not be prosecuted after the President personally directed the police administration to discontinue the case.
The Executive Director for the Media Foundation for West Africa, Professor Kwame Karikari, says the group wants an amendment to the Act for the law on causing fear and panic to be repealed. “In the past months, there have been a lot of information.
The police have arrested a number of journalists and some people who have participated in radio discussions using that particular law. So we think that it’s important that we do this roundtable because we think that the law has a potential threat to press freedom and freedom of expression generally. And because the police are using the Law in ways that we think threaten press freedom, we think that we must bring the issue into the public domain and bring some legal experts around to critique that law” he explained.