Election Petition one year on: I have absolutely no regrets – Ken Kuranchie

Managing Editor of the Daily Searchlight, Ken Kuranchie says he has “absolutely no regrets” for what he wrote in his newspaper that led him to serve a jail term for contempt of court.

Speaking Friday on Adom FMs ‘Dwaso Nsem’ exactly a year after the Supreme Court’s verdict on the petition challenging results of the 2012 presidential election, Mr. Kuranchie said he feels that whatever he wrote in his paper needed to be written.

“Some of the decisions taken by the Supreme Court were decisions that were worrying people and that was what the publication sought to receive answers to”.

The New Patriotic Party’s Communications Director, Sammy Awuku had said that the court’s citing of a Daily Guide report as an example of poor reporting, was discriminatory and hypocritical.

The court took an issue with the statement. Sammy Awuku apologised. But the court punished him by banishing him from the court for the rest of the trial.

Ken Kuranchie following the court’s summons to Sammy Awuku, wrote a front page comment in his newspaper in which he questioned how the justices heard Sammy Awuku’s comments but did not hear worse commentary from others. 

He was hauled before the court and after heated exchanges between him and the judges he said, if the justices felt offended by his comments, then he was sorry.

He was handed a ten day jail term.
However a year on, Mr. Kuranchie says “I continue to have problems with some of the decisions the Supreme Court took”.

He said his publication was to question whether verdicts by the Supreme Court can be commented on and it was seeking answers to those questions that saw him at the receiving end of a jail term.

According to him, the refusal of an application by the court to allow the Electoral Commission (EC) to present coalition and polling centre results in his view was “not a good decision and I continue to disagree with that decision, I still believe today it was not the best decision for the advancement of democracy”.

He said the administrative lapses that occured during the 2012 elections should be handled properly in order that they are not repeated in future elcetions.