Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo Markin on Sunday likened the detention of New Patriotic Party (NPP) Bono Regional Chairman Kwame Baffoe to political repression under Ghana’s former military regime.
Speaking at a press conference at the NPP headquarters in Asylum Down, Accra, the Effutu MP demanded the immediate release of Baffoe, popularly known as Abronye DC, and accused the John Dramani Mahama administration of weaponising the criminal justice system against opposition voices.
Abronye DC is on trial for offensive conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace and publication of false news, charges rooted in a social media video in which he criticised a Circuit Court judge. The court refused him bail and remanded him into the custody of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI).
“That is not the law. That is censorship from the bench,” Afenyo Markin said of the bail ruling.
The Minority Leader argued that jailing a citizen on the basis of what he might say in future amounts to pre emptive imprisonment that no constitutional democracy can defend. He insisted that criticism of public officials, including judges, falls squarely within free speech protections under Article 21 of the 1992 Constitution.
He further questioned the legality of the continued detention at the BNI, claiming that no signed and certified remand order had been produced by the court registry days after the ruling. Without such an order, he argued, the detention breaches Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees personal liberty.
Afenyo Markin alleged an unholy alliance between the Executive, state investigative agencies, and elements within the judiciary aimed at silencing the NPP, an accusation he attributed to former Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia. The pattern, he said, is undeniable.
He framed the prosecution as a backdoor revival of criminal libel laws repealed in 2001 under former President John Agyekum Kufuor. Sections 207 and 208 of the Criminal Offences Act, he argued, are now being deployed to achieve the same chilling effect on political speech that the 2001 reform sought to dismantle.
The historical comparison ran deeper. Afenyo Markin invoked the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) era under Jerry John Rawlings, when journalists, lawyers, academics, and trade unionists were detained without trial for criticising the government. He named the 1996 prosecution of editors Nana Kofi Coomson of the Ghanaian Chronicle, Ebenezer Quarcoo, and Tommy Thompson of the Free Press as a direct parallel, all charged with publishing false news.
The Minority Leader linked the Abronye DC case to recent prosecutions involving Baba Amando, David Essandoh, Adenta Kumi, and Reverend John Ntim Fordjour, describing them as selected examples from a growing list of opposition figures dragged before the courts on political speech offences.
He warned that Ghana risks slipping back into a culture of silence not announced by decree but advanced surgically through arrests, remands, and selective prosecution. He urged the judiciary to remain independent, called on civil society and the media to push back, and asked the High Court to test the legality of Abronye DC’s continued detention.
