“Where were they when we were working hard to vote incompetent, stealing Mahama and his friends and family government out in 2016? But today, Akufo-Addo and his family friends have hijacked all the contracts and chopping the money alone by heart! They should go and campaign alone and vote alone in 2020! As for me, I’m done!”
This message is catching on like fire. You believe it! But wait a minute..Have you really checked out the facts? Who are these family members and what do they control? Has the President, for example, signed away 75% of the country’s one billion metric tonnes of bauxite to them? Or done anything close? Watch out! A deliberate campaign strategy has been designed specifically to create and build layers upon layers of hostility against the President and his immediate circle. It is intended to use naked lies, innuendoes and propaganda to fabricate a falsehood and pile up public resentment and anger against the President.
The propaganda: Let it be seen as if everybody else has been ignored to struggle and that only a small circle of people around the President are greedily grabbing every opportunity. For ease of reference of attack and impact, tag this small greedy group as the so-called “Akyem Mafia”.
This is the highest form of psychological warfare to achieve a devastating political goal. The same old politrick by the same old perpetrators. Some things never change…
The aim: to isolate the president from his own party, rank and file as well as the swing voters who came out to vote massively in 2016 to give NPP the biggest electoral victory ever of any opposition party in our country.
The hope: that by December 2020, many NPP supporters will be so disillusioned by this design of “create hate and share” that apathy will set in among Akufo-Addo’s supporters that they wouldn’t bother to even show up to vote.
This strategy is essentially everything that the opposition party believes it has to offer Ghanaians. So much for a manifesto! They don’t have a record or candidate to sell so they fabricate and instigate public resentment against the incumbent. They know their candidate, John Mahama, does not inspire and his message is weak, heavily weighed down by his own deplorable [previous] performance. Voters do not believe he has anything better to offer them beyond the wasted opportunities that made John Mahama and his party lose heavily in 2016 – Yet another record [loss] in our political history.
So, turn the current President’s supporters against him. So that apathy, brought on by relentless propaganda against the President and those considered close to him, will hopefully keep a deciding number of NPP voters away from the polling booth to swing the results away from the incumbent.
Remember, this is not new. Nope! Knowing Ashanti is NPP’s stronghold and Akufo-Addo is Akyem, since 2008, the NDC and its media friends kept on creating and fanning tribal conflicts between Akyems and Ashantis, with the so-called “Akyem Mafia” being made the epicenter of this orchestrated hate campaign.
The plan has been unleashed but to a different level and it is being executed to near perfection. Already, NPP members are buying into it. It is the laziest but most effective way for John Mahama to deceive his way back into Jubilee House. Ask yourself, am I helping him? Am I doing his dirty work? Do I even realise it when I am helping Mahama’s agenda?
They have created hate against the President and they are relying on you and I to believe it, to share it, to spread it and to make it all stick. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I am Jo Benjamin.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this write-up do not represent the views of EIB Network.
