Stafford VA (GS) The leadership of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has been warned to desist from making insults the central theme of their campaign strategy in an attempt to recapture political power in the lead-up to the 2024 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. Instead, the party must stay on message and offer alternative solutions to the pressing issues that are on the bucket list of most Ghanaians.
Speaking at a forum organized by a section of the Ghanaian youth in the Greater Washington Metropolitan area at Stafford in Northern Virginia, a US-based Ghanaian media practitioner and the Chief Executive Officer of HK Consult Inc., a Public Relations, Writing, and Political consulting outfit based in Virginia, Mr. Hayford Kodua, observed that many Ghanaians are looking for a reprieve from the current economic hardships, high unemployment, hyper-inflation and the sharp fall in the value of the national currency, the Cedi.
However, it would be a wrong calculation on the part of the NDC leadership to assume that heaping insults and making unsavory comments about personalities in the ruling government will sway the political goodwill of the public towards the NDC, he indicated.
He noted that most Ghanaians understand the causes of the current economic challenges sweeping across the entire world and the public is looking for a political party that can offer better antidotes to remedy the situation.
‘Politicians who lack a coherent message and alternative plans to the status quo, tend to resort to personal attacks as an equilibrium to inflame comic political passion about their own failing political brand’, Mr. Kodua remarked. He said the road map for the NDC to win the 2024 presidential race will depend on the new ideas the Party has to offer to Ghanaians, instead of the empty rhetorics and the display of lack of substance in their communication.
Touching on the current economic challenges facing the country, Mr. Kodua who has over two decades of experience in Journalism and Public Relations, offered an interesting twist to the cause of Ghana’s current economic situation.
The government, in his view, was too much focused on the prosecution of its massive development agenda across the country, which is very laudable since it has brought a lot of relief to the majority of the population, especially in the areas of education, agriculture, road construction, health services and employment creation in the private sector.
In his estimation, the critical missing link was the country’s inability to moderate the massive spending that is involved in undertaking development projects of such great magnitude even during once-in-a-lifetime pandemics such as the current covid scourge.
“In my view, Ghana was better prepared to weather the current economic challenges such as hyper-inflation, depreciation of the Cedi against the major world currencies, and the worsening deficit situation, if the country had tapered down borrowing and expenditure on the roll out of any new social programs.
‘The government should have concentrated on completing ongoing projects during the peak of the covid pandemic in the second half of the fiscal year 2020 and utilized the slow down in economic activities as cover to push through austerity measures such as a freeze on hiring except in critical areas such as healthcare, law enforcement, transportation, and energy production, Mr. Kodua argued.
He said if the opposition NDC, which controls half of the membership of Ghana’s Parliament including the Office of the Speaker, cannot come together to fashion out attractive plans and policies and sell them to convince the voters, their current employment of what he called ‘politics of insults’ will create an impression of a Party that is bereft of ideas on the minds of the electorate.
He called for a better engagement between the NPP and the NDC, the two biggest political parties that have ruled Ghana since the commencement of the 4th Republic, to offer differing solutions to some of the pressing issues facing the country to enable the people to make informed choices.
