I won’t use intelligence agencies to chase critics - Bawumia

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia is former Vice President of Ghana and flagbearer of the NPP The New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has condemned the arrest and detention of Salomey Bafoh Awiti for abetting the publication of false news. He has used the opportunity to urge the government to release the nurse, who is a mother of three, because she has committed no crime. Dr Mahamudu Bawumia used the opportunity to urge Ghanaians to vote for him as president because during his reign as president, intelligence agencies will not be reduced to chasing citizens for insulting the president or anyone else. The story of how a Techiman-based nurse and mother of 3 (including a 4-year-old), Salomey Bafoh Awiti, was picked up in the middle of the night by national intelligence officers and has been remanded for two weeks on suspicion that she is abetting the publication of false news is very worrying to read. This is not the Ghana we want to build. I can assure Ghanaians that when given the opportunity, our intelligence agencies will not be reduced to chasing citizens for insulting the President or anyone else. I have always disavowed a politics of insults and will remind all in the political space of the need to be decorous. The ideas we need to transform our nation won’t come from insults. But I also remind the NDC government that any infringement on the right to free speech pushes our democracy backwards. Free speech, as unpalatable as it may be sometimes, is the foundation of our democracy. Source: GhanaWeb