NPP won’t run 2016 campaign from radio studios — Agyepong
The chief scribe of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Kwabena Adjei Agyepong, aka Kala, has asserted that the 2016 election campaign will not be carried out from the studios of radio stations.
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“Political talk shows alone cannot win the 2016 Election for the NPP,” he insisted in a telephone chat with the Daily Graphic yesterday.
Three party general secretaries, including that of the NPP, who refused to participate in Joy FM’s Newsfile programme last Saturday, have generated brouhaha within the media landscape for which the three have been described as emotionally incompetent.
The three are the general secretaries of the NPP, Mr Agyepong, the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Mr Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, and the National Secretary of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Mr Kofi Asamoah-Siaw.
But in reacting to the boycott of the Newsfile programme on electoral reforms, Mr Agyepong gave an assurance that the NPP would honour invitations to political talk shows but asserted that the 2016 election campaign of the NPP would not hinge on any lazy approach by sitting on radio talk shows in anticipation that the party was campaigning.
“If speaking on talk shows wins elections, the NPP would have won elections long time ago. Winning elections require actual hard work on the ground, getting ourselves dirty with the people on the ground, and that’s my focus as a general secretary of my party, determined to win an election,” he said.
He said his focus on winning the 2016 polls for the NPP demanded party members moving from village to village and hamlets to engage in hard work on the ground.
“We want to strengthen the party at the grass roots and show the young ones the way to voluntarily work harder for the party,” he disclosed.
In the view of Mr Agyepong, if the NPP is keen on winning political power in the 2016 elections, then “we won’t allow a situation where party members are on radio political talk shows all the time. We are supposed to be in the communities working with our party people and not always in Accra radio studios; no way!”.
Background
The boycott of a current affairs programme on electoral reforms by three general secretaries from the NPP, Convention People’s Party (CPP) and Progressive People’s Party (PPP) was heavily criticised by a section of the public.
The three general secretaries refused to participate in the Joy FM’s Newsfile programme last Saturday because according to them, the General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia, who was also expected on the programme, was going to be absent.
The three, particularly NPP and CPP, considered Mr Asiedu Nketia’s absence as a snub and, therefore, refused to participate in the programme.
Meanwhile, Mr Asiedu Nketia has denied accepting an invitation from Accra-based Joy FM to participate in a radio discussion on electoral reforms last Saturday.
In a reaction, the former Member of Parliament (MP) for Wenchi West told Okay FM yesterday he could not accept blame for the fiasco.
“My counterparts could have confirmed from me if I had accepted to be on the show or had promised to send my deputy to represent me,” he said.