Propaganda video against Akufo-Addo could annoy floating voters – Prof Gyampo

Political scientist, Prof Ransford Gyampo, has criticised the release of a video in which Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo allegedly took a bribe in the early days of his Presidency.

The Senior Political Science Lecturer at the University of Ghana, Legon, said the questions about the authenticity of the video could annoy discerning floating voters, with just a few days to the December 7 polls.

According to him, the use of propaganda in elections to win votes, by their very nature, involves the publication of half-truths but because floating voters do not have the time to interrogate half-truths, they are likely to see any political party feeding them with half-truths as not credible.

“Which of them is fake? Which one is the original? Is the ‘fake’ the original or the ‘original’ the fake?

“Who donates campaign T-shirts after elections? What will an elected President use 2016 campaign t-shirts for, in 2017? These and other allied issues raise imponderable doubts in my mind about the video,” Prof Gyampo asked.

Prof Gyampo’s comments, which is contained in a short write up sent to GhanaWeb, is in reaction to allegations by the NDC that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo took a bribe of $40,000 in the early days of his Presidency.

The NDC backs the allegations with a video it says was made by an investigative journalist.

The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the government communication machinery have discredited the video as fake.

The NPP says the video was made when Nana Akufo-Addo was in opposition and not when he was President as the NDC has claimed.

Prof Gyampo surmised that the video released by the NDC at a press conference on Wednesday, December 2, 2020, is also critical to the issues about election campaign financing.

“If it is about campaign financing, then none of the political parties can mount the moral high ground in pontificating about how funds are raised,” he said.

He signed off his write-up with the following advice: “I suggest that those peddling and circulating the video focus more on the campaign, which in my view, is going well, rather than making capital out of the video. This is because it has the tendency to rather annoy the segment of voters who will decide who must be crowned on December 7."

Ghanaians will go to the polls on December 7, 2020, to elect a President and Members of Parliament.

The race will be between incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo and John Dramani Mahama of the main NDC, although eleven political parties and one independent candidate are billed to contest.