Deputy Communications Director of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is deeply troubled over the incarceration of the editor of the Daily Searchlight newspaper.
Sammy Awuku said he feels responsible for the ten-day jail term handed to Ken Kuranchie by the Supreme Court for criminal contempt.
The NPP firebrand made the confession on Friday when a team of NPP members went to the Ho Central Prison to visit Mr Kuranchie.
The team could not see him because he had exhausted his visiting period for the week.
The Daily Searchlight newspaper editor was found guilty for criminal contempt after he published an editorial which was critical of the Supreme Court’s punitive action against Sammy Awuku.
The court had early on invoked its powers of restriction and stopped Sammy Awuku from attending the ongoing Presidential Election Petition for describing the judges’ final touchline warning to errant journalists and lawyers as “selective and hypocritical.”
Kuranchie was unimpressed with the judges’ ruling and sought to defend the hypocritical comment by Awuku in his newspaper editorial.
The Judges, having read the editorial, dragged Ken Kuranchie before the court to explain why he had to defy the authority of the judges.
Kuranchie showed little remorse for the comments he made and suffered a ten-day imprisonment penalty which began Tuesday.
A failed NDC MP aspirant, Stephen Atubiga, who was also hauled before the court for making similar contemptuous comments, got a milder three-day jail sentence because he was “profusely apologetic”.
He has since been released, but Kuranchie has a couple more days left.
About 20 NPP delegation led by the party’s Organiser, Moctar Bamba which included Sammy Awuku on Friday went to the Ho Central Prison to solidarize with the jailed editor.
A disappointed Sammy Awuku told Joy News he would be back to visit the “patriot” who had been imprisoned for the just cause of the country’s democracy.
“Ken is in prison because of me,” he confessed, but said he is consoled by the fact that Kuranchie is in high spirits.
Source: GhanaWeb
