Representatives of minority political parties say the media has not been paying enough attention to their activities, thus accounting for their abysmal performance in previous general elections.
According to them because of the media’s constant coverage of the two main political parties at the expense of the others, their activities remain in the shadow; this they say has got Ghanaians thinking they do nothing.
Speaking for the All People’s Congress, Hassan Ayariga, said the media’s reluctance to air news from smaller political parties was responsible for their supposed silence.
He said, “Look, I’ve been on the ground, campaigning, farming, doing a whole lot of things around, and I invite media houses, they come they pick stories, you don’t even hear, you don’t see.”
Mr Ayariga told who appeared on JoyNews’ PM Express Wednesday told Evans Mensah that “Severally I’ve made so many press conferences talking about issues of security in this country, talking about issues of corruption in this country, talking about issues of unemployment in this country, and many other policies that the NPP is not doing right; the failed promises, on and on.
“Your representatives come, pick the story and then I watch throughout and then we don’t hear anything. So we ask ourselves what is the essence of inviting you to our programmes when you don’t air them. I don’t know whether somebody is paying someone somewhere not to air our views.”
Chairman of the People’s National Congress (PNC) Bernard Mornah also stated that due to the media not giving salience to their issues, smaller political parties like the PNC have to overstretch their limited resources to make space for other unplanned activities.
He was speaking concerning the ongoing voters’ registration exercise which the PNC and other opposition parties had vehemently opposed. According to him, should the media have pushed that agenda, the PNC wouldn’t have to use their limited resources to monitor the national activity.
He said, “So when we were protesting for instance, the new voters’ register and its implications on smaller political parties and what we could move forward with, you’d have seen that one of the reasons that I kept advancing is that political parties have their own timetable and that compiling a needless voters register would eat into our time table and also the limited resources that we have. You (the media) did not pay heed to it.
“So today if you are talking about inability to organize these things then you should know that limited resources, for instance, we could avail for our party’s internal organization are now being used to monitor a national exercise.”
From the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Nana Ofori Owusu stated that the media has been most unfair to smaller political parties, as it has not availed its platforms to them in the manner it has to the major political parties.
He therefore stated that they could not be blamed for their abysmal performance in the previous genral elections.
“The media has been most unfair to us… You have not been interested. The fact that we have been put within this cluster speaking on this platform and you don’t allow us space on your other platforms until there is some activity or politics is coming and you don’t give us the opportunity to sound out our policies and what we want to do for Ghana, then you turn around and you want to blame us, the victims, that we have not shown enough of our activities and goodwill to the people of Ghana is most unfortunate,” he bemoaned.
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