ATTO-MENSAH v. THE REPUBLIC

The appellant was convicted by the Circuit Court, Cape Coast, on two counts of defaming the National Liberation Council contrary to section 183A of the Criminal Code, 1960 (Act 29), and was sentenced to three years' imprisonment with hard labour on each count. He has appealed against both the conviction and the sentence and his learned counsel Mr. Sarpong, with leave of court [p.565] argued the additional grounds of appeal in conjunction with the ground of appeal relating to sentence.

Mr. Sarpong's first ground was that the trial circuit judge wrongly overruled the submission of no case made at the close of the case for the prosecution. His main quarrel under this ground was with the construction of section 183A of the Criminal Code, 1960 (Act 29), (inserted by section 1 of the Criminal Code (Amendment) Act, 1961 (Act 82), and as amended by the National Liberation Council (Proclamation) (Amendment) (No. 2) Decree, 1966 (N.L.C.D. 104)), which reads:

"Any person who with intent to bring the National Liberation Council into hatred, ridicule or contempt publishes any defamatory or insulting matter whether by writing, print, word of mouth or in any other manner whatsoever concerning the National Liberation Council commits an offence and shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding five hundred pounds or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or to both such fine and imprisonment."

Mr. Sarpong's argument is that section 183A is out of context with the whole Criminal Code and that with the suspension of the 1960 Republican Constitution, there is no President in Ghana and as section 183A was passed to protect the President in person, no offence was committed by the appellant. This argument at first sounds plausible but when one considers the present words of section 183A as amended the argument loses its glamour and enchantment. Section 19 (1) of the Interpretation Act, 1960 (C.A. 4), provides:

"For the purpose of ascertaining the mischief and defect which an enactment was made to cure and as an aid to the construction of the enactment a court may have regard to any text-book or other work of reference, to the report of any commission of inquiry into the state of the law, to any memorandum published by authority in reference to the enactment or to the Bill for the enactment and to any papers laid before the National Assembly in reference to it, but not to the debates in the Assembly."