“I recall the heydays of domestication when GCPP’s Dan Lartey provided the aperitif of sound bites and confusing concepts that gleefully went around the family dinner table before bedtime. The concepts were not as bad as their heinous, stuttering articulation. The incoherence was so edifying we cried for more!”
It’s still not clear who will win the 2020 elections. It is difficult to objectively predict the winner because the NPP and the NDC (forget about the rest) fundamentally have equal support base nationwide, but no one knows which one of them can electrify their support base in order to churn out the votes in drones.
Besides, fear of the coronavirus is a major inhibition against conducting an objective and reliable survey on the possible outcome of the 2020 elections. Apart from one or two largely unscientific, partisan projections, we all seem to be caught up in guessing the winner, with only a couple of months to go.
Campaign activity itself has been unnaturally hushed up, unattractive in specific terms, and less and less exciting in the main. The drums which used to send everything into a magnificent roar are only now beginning to find their voice, while the dancing troupes appear to be returning to the streets slowly. Thanks to COVID, it is no longer attractive to hire partisan crowds even for the magical purpose of mesmerizing opponents these days!
But I have been supremely worried about the lack of political humour or excitement on the campaign trail. Everyone appears to be either too serious, too hungry or too complacent to vivify the electorate with humor as has been the norm in the past. The messages are rather terse, predictable, and pedantic. Most of the speakers are rigid, unexciting, stomach led, clearly unnationalistic, and anything but persuasive.
Quite apart from comical Akua Donkor, whose sound bites against President Mahama the other day sent me into a fit of laughter, no one else has really electrified the campaign trail or supplied any sumptuous delicacy for dinner yet. Everywhere you turn, the same old familiar faces stir at you, brandishing fat cheeks of affluence, or pale faces of hunger and anger!
Same old voices, same old antagonism, same old complaints, same old phrases, everything stirs at you in unedifying terms you can hardly breathe! Our hope is old!
I recall the heydays of domestication when GCPP’s Dan Lartey provided the aperitif of sound bites and confusing concepts that gleefully went around the family dinner table before bedtime. The concepts were not as bad as their heinous, stuttering articulation. Their incoherence was so edifying, we cried for more! Say whatever you like about Uncle Dan, but the late GCPP leader was an original theorist, who served us with memorable family delicacies every campaign season.
Whereas Nana’s “Fellow Ghanaians” campaign messages continue to enjoy the advantage of multiple free air time and wide reach at prime time, John Mahama, making a comeback as the first former President of the Fourth Republic to seek re-election, enjoys no such advantages or privileges, and understandably spends a chunk of his campaign effort moaning about the deviations and infidelities of the EC.
Perhaps, GBC should consider affording former President Mahama similar primetime advantages now that it is quite obvious Nana’s serial addresses are strategic campaign messages meant to showcase his fabulous achievements and advantage his re-election bid.
Both campaigns have failed to spark any mass enthusiasm so far, let alone eased electoral tensions. The coming days will be significant, how message strategists conduct their campaigns heretofore!
