Freedom fighter, Oliver Mawuse Barker-Vormawor, has challenged the Attorney General (AG) to take him to the High Court for trial in the case in which state actors had dubiously charged him with treason felony for using the word “Coup” in his social media posts.
For almost one month now, the Akufo Addo administration has unconstitutionally incarcerated him as a political prisoner and is being played around in district courts that have no business hearing the alleged treason case.
Mr. Barker-Vormawor had in mid-February posted on his Facebook page that if the government passed the controversial Electronic Levy (e-levy), he will stage a coup himself.
This is after a series of posts he had made since June 2021 to clarify what he meant by a coup.
In court on Monday, the #FixTheCountry Convener parried concerns about his well-being in police custody from the trial judge at the Tema High Court and dared the AG to bring it on.
This was after Daniel Mensah, the trial judge had enquired about the wellbeing of Mr. Barker-Vormawor, whose detention many, including the Dean of the University of Ghana Law School, Prof. Raymond Atuguba, has been described as unconstitutional an inhuman display that has become characteristic of the way the despotic Akufo Addo administration treats dissenters.
“I am in good health. I am prepared to stand trial. I do hope they take me to trial,” Barker-Vormawor dared the judiciary and the AG.
It is the expectation that if the AG goes to trial with the case and adjudication is fair, the State will lose.
This is because the claim that Mr. Barker-Vormawor had expressly said he would stage a coup is seen by many as preposterous, particularly when the same Barker-Vormawor had expressly clarified what he meant when he used the word Coup-a French-to-English adaptation meaning “Hit”.
Nowhere in all his social media posts had Mr. Barker-Vormawor used the qualifying adjective “Coup d’etat” which means an overthrow of the constitution through violent means-an action usually undertaken by renegade soldiers pissed with the status quo.
The young man who was angered by Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu’s cut of a birthday cake baked in the wording of the obnoxious “e-levy” had written on social media that if the e-levy is passed he would stage a coup.
As many critics have pointed out to the Akufo-Addo government, the supposed threat was conditional – premised on “if.” The e-levy has not yet been passed and so the government had no business arresting him.
Again, it is pointed out that even if he wanted to, Mr. Barker-Vormawor does not have the means to stage a coup.
Besides all these, Mr. Barker-Vormawor himself has explained that what he actually meant was a social revolution.
In a post on August 13, 2021, he wrote: “ #FixTheCountry abhors coup d’etats. Why use a Gun when our voices can achieve a New Constitution? Precisely because we hate Coup d’etats we don’t understand why our airport bears the name of a traitor #NrumahNeverDies.”
Earlier on June 4, 2021, he clarified further when his use of the innocuous word coup invoked hysterical reaction from “footsoldiers” of a desperate Akufo Addo administration.
“For the record, the only coup I am interested in is a StatuCoup. A coup of mindsets; a coup of how we hold leaders to account; a coup of our FamaNyame attitudes; a coup of nonchalance; a coup of abuse of Public Office; a coup of corruption and systemic rot…,” he wrote.
However, the Akufo-Addo government, whose incompetence and unprecedented corruption has driven it into a hysteria exhibited in the brutal crackdown and murder of citizens who stand up against it.
Already, up to a dozen people have been killed by state-sponsored killers in the security services, including an undercover investigative journalist, Ahmed Hussein Suale, who was assassinated in a point-blank range shortly after the ruling Patriotic Party (NPP) MP for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong placed a bounty on his head.
Suale was investigating a serious allegation that President Akufo Addo and Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia were recipients of some US$ 5 million bribe in return for awarding juicy infrastructural contracts to some Arab kingpins.
Meanwhile, If Mr. Barker-Vormawor’s case goes to trial and he wins, Ghana which is already broke will be saddled with a huge compensation payout to Barker-Vormawor, a PhD student and a constitutional lawyer.
Meanwhile, in court on Monday, Mr. Barker-Vormawor’s lawyer, Akoto Ampaw, demanded bail for his client who has been denied bail at least once.
He described as preposterous claims that the youth activist will evade trial if he is given bail, something the state has claimed.