Your insults only increasing your chances of losing elections - Politicians warned

A senior lecturer and political analyst at the University of Ghana, has cautioned parties indulged in incensed language and detrimental speech against their opponents to refrain from such or risk losing any chances of winning.

While addressing the impact of hate speech and indecent language on political fortunes, Dr Seidu Alidu enumerated that the act negatively brands a party and creates a lasting tag.

He explained that there is the need for party communicators to engage electorates on Campaign Specific Information (CSI) which involves what voters learn about a party's position on various issues during an election.

He also noted that rational voters abandon abusive political parties and become suspicious of their true intentions even after the party(ies) repents.

Dr Seidu Alidu was speaking at a forum organized by the Media for West Africa themed: Engagement with political party communicators on issues-based and decent language campaign.

In recent times, politicians have been reprimanded for openly engaging in barrage of attacks at their opponents on media platforms.

The phenomenon has skyrocketed especially as the country goes to the polls in December.

Many media platforms, both virtual and social have become avenues to campaign to win electorates over.

But the political science lecturer believes that for politicians to stand a chance of winning in the elections, they need to project policy-based issues and what their candidates have in stock for the citizenry.

“Elections is about competition, it’s about information campaign. What political parties are supposed to do is to inform the electorates about the calibre, character and competence of their leaders… the issues that are of significant importance to the campaign this year, and not just that they should move forward to tell us their position on those issues…” he told GhanaWeb in an exclusive interview.

“I think this is very important than insulting people or attacking the integrity of other people. Because when you attack the integrity of another person who is not in your campaign, it may energise some elements within your party who are hawkish in orientation but that does not translate into votes from discerning rational floating voters who are not part of your support base…” Dr Alidu added.