Dec Poll: NDC Packaging Message Better Than NPP – Lecturer

The governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) seems to be doing well in terms of how it is selling its message on infrastructural development to the electorate ahead of this year’s presidential and parliamentary elections, but the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) is not highlighting the economic challenges Ghanaians are saddled with at the moment, Dr Edward Brenya, a senior lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), has said.

According to him, the choice of the Cape Coast Sports Stadium for the campaign launch of the NDC on Sunday, 14 August, was a strategic plan to send a clear message to the people of the Central Region that the government, led by John Mahama, had delivered on its promise to develop infrastructure.

Speaking in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of Ghana Yensom on Accra100.5FM on Tuesday August 16, Mr Brenya said: “The NDC is depending on the delivered promises in the Central Region to win more votes. They are saying: ‘We have delivered in the case of infrastructure [hence the choice of the Cape Coast stadium for the campaign launch].’

“The way their messages will be packaged and delivered will determine whether the [region’s] votes will swing or not. If the NDC succeeds in packaging the message about their solidarity with that constituency, the Fante constituency, and then keep to the promise of the president that: ‘I will continue with the good works of ex-President Mills’, then it will play well, but if the NPP succeeds in talking about economic hardships, it will sink and that swing will determine who becomes the president in 2016.

“…Depending on the way the message is packaged – and for now I can say clearly that all of them are struggling – the NDC seems to be doing a little better with the way they are packaging their infrastructural [projects]. We are not getting that much on the economic issue from the opposition … [but] we still have four months; we don’t know how it will turn out. How these messages are packaged and become the focal message of the campaign in 2016 will determine how the swing will go in 2016,” he added.