Remind Ghanaians of 'the bleak' situation we inherited – Akufo-Addo to NPP communicators

President Nana Akufo-Addo has urged communicators of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) to remind Ghanaians of his government’s achievements in the past three-and-a-half years as the country goes into another general election.

In a virtual meeting with the party’s 2020 Campaign Communications Advisory Team via Zoom on Sunday, 12 July 2020 from the Presidential Villa where he is self-isolating over COVID-19 fears, the President said: “We need to set before the Ghanaian people clearly, the situation we inherited on the 7 of January 2017”.

“It is critical”, the President stressed, “because, without that reference, it is difficult to measure the quality of the achievement”.

“You have the records: dumsor, high rate of inflation, low rates of growth, widespread unemployment, a certain level of demoralisation in the country; and within three years, this very bleak economic narrative has been transformed”, he reminded the communicators.

President Akufo-Addo also urged the team to drum home the government’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think there is a need to continue stressing the need for respecting the COVID-19 protocols. We are in government and it is very important that, that aspect of our concern about the need for our people to be safe comes out positively in everything we say. People have to take the protocols seriously.”

Ahead of the President’s virtual meeting, the Campaign team had issued a statement urging the communicators to focus on the government’s records.

The statement, signed by Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, Deputy Manager of the NPP’s 2020 Campaign Team, said: “The President of the Republic of Ghana and presidential candidate of the NPP and the 2020 campaign team, wish to remind its faithful that the party’s philosophy of positive engagement still holds valid”.

“We, therefore, urge all who speak for, or purport to speak for the party, to refrain from attacking political opponents. We specifically ask that no reference should ever be made to opponents’ ethnicity, religion or gender”.

“We shall campaign on our record and win. Indeed, there is enough to speak about with regard to our record. We cannot beat our opponents in the politics of calumny. Let us, therefore, refrain”.