Majority Chief Whip Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor has criticised the arrest of people over alleged insults directed at the government or public officials, warning that such actions could ultimately hurt the administration.<\/p>\n
Mr Dafeamekpor said while insults against public officials were unfortunate and should not be encouraged, they did not pose a threat to the government and should not automatically lead to arrests.<\/p>\n
He said repeated arrests over people\u2019s utterances could create the impression that the government was suppressing dissent, particularly amid accusations by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) of political persecution and abuse of state institutions.<\/p>\n
Speaking on TV3\u2019s\u00a0The Key Points<\/em> on Saturday, August 8, Mr Dafeamekpor said the government should focus on delivering its mandate rather than allowing arrests over political comments to become a source of controversy.<\/p>\n \u201cI am upset by some of these arrests; it hurts the government. Sometimes government doesn\u2019t even sanction them; it\u2019s the police.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that as government, we must pay attention to some of these things; it doesn\u2019t help. These things don\u2019t detract from the government in any way, so they should allow the people to speak. Let\u2019s focus on our mandate and deliver. As a government, we don\u2019t want this at all. Arresting people and confining them, it doesn\u2019t help us. That is my disclaimer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mr Dafeamekpor urged the government to be mindful of the broader implications of arrests arising from people\u2019s utterances, stressing that such actions could undermine rather than protect the administration.<\/p>\n His comments follow the NPP\u2019s \u201cDemocracy Under Attack\u201d demonstration on Thursday, August 6. The party said the protest was aimed at defending the rule of law, constitutional governance and democratic accountability.<\/p>\n The NPP has accused the government of political persecution, selective justice and abuse of state institutions, allegations the government has rejected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Majority Chief Whip Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor has criticised the arrest of people over alleged insults directed at the government or public officials, warning that such actions could ultimately hurt the administration. Mr Dafeamekpor said while insults against public officials were unfortunate and should not be encouraged, they did not pose a threat to the government and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123457,"featured_media":17448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,18],"tags":[2331,1256,1192],"class_list":["post-17447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","category-politics","tag-arrest","tag-mahama","tag-rockson-nelson-dafeamekpor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/123457"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17447"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17450,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17447\/revisions\/17450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}