Sammy Gyamfi, the Communication Director of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), has rendered an unqualified apology to the media for the treatment meted out to journalists in the aftermath of the 7 December elections.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra, Gyamfi cautioned party supporters to refrain from assaulting journalists and media houses that attempt to cover events by the party.
The party has come under severe public backlash for inciting its supporters against the media following the declaration of presidential results in favour of president Akufo-Addo.
Gyamfi also called on media houses that were identified to have committed errors during the election coverage to come out and apologise.
For his part, NDC’s Director of Elections, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, also called on some media houses to apologise for churning out “false” results after the elections.
“You (the media) owe us an apology for putting out wrong results. So we are talking about specific programs like Paul Adom-Otchere’s program and that TV3 program. Those are the ones we are raising issues about. Some of them know but they don’t want to deal with the truth and the people make it look like we are against all the media, it’s not true,” Afriyie Ankrah explained.
He added: “We are not against TV3, we are not against Metro, we are against the specific programmes and falsehood that they propagated.”
EC declaration
On Wednesday 9 December, the chair of the Electoral Commission, Jean Mensa, declared Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo winner of the 2020 presidential election after he defeated Mahama of the National Democratic Congress.
Akufo-Addo won 51.59% of the total votes cast, against Mahama’s 6,214,889, a 47.36% vote share. Akufo-Addo polled a total of 6,730,413 votes out of the total 13,119,460, securing a majority of more than 517,000.
However, the NDC has since rejected the 2020 results, describing the election as “flawed.”
Mahama last week revealed the party will explore all legal avenues available to overturn the outcome of the elections.
Fred Dzakpata
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