Our gifts to voters are publicity, not vote buying efforts – NDC

The ruling National Democratic Congress has refuted allegations of vote buying saying the gifts and paraphernalia’s they give people on their campaign are for marketing and publicity purposes only.

“They are merely marketing efforts”, a member of the Party’s campaign team Felix Kwakye Ofosu has said.

Kwakye Ofosu in an interview with Accra based Joy FM on Monday said the vote buying claims against his party, was initiated by the NPP, who are also “often” found partaking in acts of gifts distribution themselves.

According to him, the act should be called what it is, “publicity efforts”, and not what the NPP “try to make it look like” in the case of the ruling NDC.

“Parties engage in all manner of activities to publicize their candidates and other programmes…” he argued, adding “I have seen the opposition, the NPP have also branded head pans and other things.

“I have even seen the wife of the NPP flagbearer, Madam Rebecca Akufo-Addo handing gifts to people in their sick bed in hospitals for instance. I don’t think that, really, it was intended to buy votes. We can say that she is campaigning for her husband or marketing her husband.

“So you find that there would be branded head pans or branded sewing machines that we would give to selected groups, it’s a way of achieving further publicity,” he stated.

Felix Kwakye Ofosu has said the NDC believes the people of Ghana will exercise their votes wisely.

“How many sewing machines can you really distribute? How many head pans can you distribute?” he asked.

“There are 14million voters. I can say the NDC has at least 2 million votes … is it practical to buy 12million votes?” he asked

“I would like to believe that people give their votes either way on more substantive reasoning, like their welfare, how they perceived other parties to have performed against another.”