GhanaWeb Polls: Sammy Gyamfi’s cartoon post was 'not offensive' - 86% of respondents say

Over 86% of Ghanaians, who took part in a poll conducted by GhanaWeb have said a cartoon post by the Director of Communication of the opposition National Democratic Congress, Sammy Gyamfi was not offensive.

The photo, which Mr. Gyamfi posted on his official twitter, highlights the sad death of George Floyd, an African-American man, who was murdered by the police and has since sparked worldwide protests against police brutality.

The poll which was conducted on June 4, 2020, revealed that 16,113 votes, representing 86.87%, said the cartoon post by Sammy Gyamfi was not offensive, while 2,246 votes representing 12.11% condemned the post.

Some 189 persons, also representing 1.02% said they were undecided about whether the post was offensive or not.

The photo which depicts the Electoral Commission (EC) Chairperson, Jean Mensa choking a handcuffed man with the new voters’ register and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo kneeling on the man sparked social media outrage. Many followed with calls for the post to be deleted.

While many people have not taken his comments lightly, they feel it is inhuman and insensitive at such a time to make such a post to incite a needless political discourse.

Moments after his post, Sammy Gyamfi of the National Democratic Congress took to social media to defend his decision to draw similarities between the choking to death of a black man in the United States and the EC’s unshaken resolve to put together a new voter’ register.

See results from the poll below:



Background

GhanaWeb launched its polls in May with the first question being: Should the EC go ahead with the new register?

This poll question gained 141,132 responses in 48 hours and over 2,000 people commented under the poll expressing divergent views about the Electoral Commission and the new voters’ register.

The GhanaWeb Poll is an open-access poll that allows participants to self-select into participation. The results of the poll cannot be generalized, but are only representative of the participants of the poll.

The poll seeks to enable GhanaWeb readers to predict the opinions of Ghanaians on issues and decisions that affect the country.