The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has charged members of the New Patriotic Party, and especially its communications team, to tell a positive story of the government by focusing on its achievements and programmes.
The president made this call when he held an online meeting with the party’s communications advisory team on Sunday 12 July 2020.
The president addressed the team from the Presidential Villa, where he is halfway through a 14-day self-imposed quarantine after members of his close staff at the Office of the President in Jubilee House contracted COVID-19.
“The quality of achievements of this government in various areas, whether it is in health, education, infrastructure development – across the board, social and economic – has been one that has affected virtually everyone in the country and all parts of the country.
“There is no part of Ghana that can say that somehow rather that they have been left out in the programmes of development of this government. That has to be a critical aspect of our outreach,” Akufo-Addo said.
What NPP inherited
As part of the communications strategy, the president urged NPP party communicators not to forget that the December race will come down to a contest between the two main competitors of 2016.
They should therefore make it a point to emphasise, in their engagements with the people of Ghana, the situation the NPP inherited when it took over from President John Mahama and his National Democratic Congress on 7 January 2017.
The 7 December 2020 race will be a repeat of the 2016 contest, but with John Mahama now as the main challenger.
“It is critical, because, without that difference,” without the comparison, “it is very difficult to measure the quality of the achievements,” the president said.
COVID-19 protocols
Turning his attention to COVID-19 and the need for citizens to respect the laid-down protocols, President Akufo-Addo asked the participants in the Zoom meeting to give priority to public education to combat the coronavirus.
“We are a government and it is very important that aspect of our concern about the need for our people to be safe comes out constantly in virtually everything that we say. People have to take the protocols seriously,” President Akufo-Addo said. The World Health Organization reports that the past week has seen a higher than usual global surge in cases.
Voter registration
On the voter registration exercise by the Electoral Commission (EC), President Akufo-Addo directed the NPP communications advisory team to make it a point to stress the need for every Ghanaian to go out and register.
He said the reports emerging from the EC on turnout and participation are encouraging but more needs to be done.
He called for more to be done to get people to register and those who register to do so by observing the health and safety protocols strictly.
The registration, which ends on 6 August 2020, is likely to produce a smaller voters’ register than the previous one. This is because of an expected clean-up which should wipe the register clean of dead people and non-eligible individuals who may have registered using the National Health Insurance Scheme card in 2012, for example.
“We want everybody who is eligible to register to have the opportunity to do so within time and we have to keep that as part of our narrative,” President Akufo-Addo said.
The president’s message was simple: “Register now, to vote later” in December. He is urging all Ghanaians to exercise their civic responsibility on 7 December, and that can only happen if they get their names on the electoral roll before 6 August.
Wilberforce Asare
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