Enough of the romance; be critical of government – Minority to media

The Minority in Ghana’s parliament has chastised the local media for being in bed with government.

The Minority’s criticism comes barely a month after former President John Mahama accused the media in the West African country of treating the Akufo-Addo government with kid gloves.

“During my tenure, everything someone does they tag the person ‘Mahama boy’ or ‘Mahama girl’ but today the narrative is different. The media refer to people by their names,” Mahama bemoaned while addressing supporters of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) after the party’s Unity Walk in the Central Region.

Sharing the sentiments of the former president, the Minority leader, Haruna Iddrisu expressed serious concerns over what he described as the media’s unwillingness to critically interrogate cases of malfeasance in the government uncovered by the minority.

Speaking at a roundtable discussion on the yet to be presented 2018 budget and the country’s general economic outlook, Iddrisu said: “We can understand that the ruling government has some romance for one year in terms of its goodwill. But when a political opposition and the ranking member on finance raises that, we want to understand how GHS177million have been spent in the issuance of bond is not for you the media to go publishing that it is propaganda.”

He thus challenged the media to be more critical of the government saying: “Go behind the veil; interrogate what he has said, interrogate what government has said, you don’t leave it at that level that this is political propaganda.”