No political party should be elected through ‘deceit’!

I could not believe my ears when I recently heard an opposition party communicator unabashedly explaining how they intend to go all out to convince the good people of Ghana into accepting that the incumbent government has not implemented a single 2016 Manifesto promise.

In fact, I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how and why any political party worth its salt would persistently resort to the propagation of vile propaganda with the view to winning political power.

Are they still taking the good people of Ghana for granted?

Why can’t they stick to issue-based campaign and produce facts and figures to buttress their claims?

How long would they keep insulting the intelligence of the good people of Ghana?

Dearest reader, tell me, how can a political party, seriously vying for power, keep criticising the government in power without proffering any alternative solutions to problems?

It is absolutely true that the incumbent NPP government has not been able to implement all its 2016 Manifesto promises.

It is also an undeniable fact that since assuming power 30 months ago, the NPP government has rolled out an encouraging number of Manifesto promises to the delight of the vast majority of Ghanaians.

There is no denying or ignoring the fact that flagship programmes and policies such as the Free SHS, One District One Factory, One Village One Dam, One Million Dollar per Constituency, Planting for Food and Jobs, Planting for Export and Rural Development, Rearing for Food and Jobs, Tax reductions, amongst others have been rolled out.

Let us be honest, it is quite patronising for political party communicators to seek to hoodwink the good people of Ghana into believing that they are not benefiting from the Free SHS, for instance.

Dearest reader, If not for sheer propaganda, what would then motivate a group of communicators to insist that Ghanaian parents are suffering in abject penury, when the Akufo-Addo’s government has judiciously distributed the national resources in the form of Free SHS, which paved way for more than 400,000 children a year, including the over 190,000 children who otherwise would not have the opportunity to enter senior high school?

Tell me, what would motivate political party communicators to assert relentlessly that Ghanaian traders are suffering in the hands of the NPP government, when the Akufo-Addo’s government has relieved them of over eighteen nuisance taxes which had hitherto crippled their businesses?

If not a calculated attempt to deceive Ghanaians for their votes, how can any political party communicator claim that Akufo-Addo is not doing anything about Ghana’s deplorable roads, while the NPP government is prudently using Ghana’s bauxite in a barter deal worth around $2 billion with the Chinese state-owned hydropower engineering and construction outfit, Sinohydro, to construct roads across the country?

How can anyone insist that Akufo-Addo is not doing enough to address the unemployment problem in the country, when the NPP government has facilitated more than 181 factories, which are in various stages of completion across the country as part of the One District One Factory programme?

Why must anyone resort to sheer propaganda, when the Akufo-Addo’s government has given about one hundred thousand graduates jobs under the pragmatic National Builders Corp (NABCO) scheme and thousands more, including nurses and teachers, have been employed in the public service since the NPP government assuming office?

Gone are the days when the unsuspecting Ghanaians fell for abhorrent propaganda.

The good people of Ghana, have, indeed, shrugged off their ‘benightedness’ to the utter chagrin of the inveterate propagandists.

What is propaganda?

Propaganda is defined in its most neutral and simple sense as “the persuasive dissemination of particular ideas or material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause (Oxford English Dictionary).

In other words, “propagandism” is the systematic propagation of a doctrine or information reflecting the views and interests of those propagating such information or doctrine.

The meaning of propaganda traces its roots to the “Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide”- a committee of Cardinals founded in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV to oversee the spread of Catholicism abroad, by any means necessary.

Consequently, the word propaganda came to mean the concerted effort to spread any belief Propagandists are associated with. Thus, propaganda is regarded as "a deliberate attempt to alter or maintain a balance of power that is advantageous to the propagandists."

The experts, however, argue that a message can be classified as propaganda if it “suggests something negative and dishonest”.

The preceding definitions of propaganda summarise Hitler’s observation on propaganda.

Hitler observed: "With the help of a skilful and continuous application of propaganda, it is possible to make the people conceive even of heaven as hell (Adolf Hitler)."

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” (Adolf Hitler).

I must, therefore, admit that I was not least surprised when the outgone NDC’s Vice Chairperson, Madam Anita Desoso, revealed on Asempa FM on Monday 15th October 2018 that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) bizarrely danced to the tunes of the opposition by changing the nomenclature of their Propaganda Secretary to Communication Officer.

Strangely, despite the host of the programme’s insistence that the Communication Officer is much more refined than Propaganda Secretary, Anita Desoso nonetheless insisted that it was a wrong move for the party to change its identity on the dictates of the opposition.

On reflection, though, I would like to agree with the former NDC’s Vice-Chairperson. Propaganda is indeed an inherent characteristic of NDC, and therefore there was no need to try to deceive Ghanaians by pretending to discard such a distinct identity.

The contending schools of thought have been arguing that NDC was founded on communist ideals, thus the party thrives on vile propaganda.

Besides, some reflective observers have been arguing vehemently that the NDC’s relentless garble is in line with Hitler’s observation on propaganda.

In sum, the NDC faithful have a penchant for resorting to systematic propagation of propaganda.


k.badu2011@gmail.com