A Political Science Researcher and Lecturer has characterised the speech of Vice President Bawumia as Propaganda, based on the platform he chose to speak on the state of the Economy.
Dr. Bawumia spoke on the State of the economy this week at the Pentecost Conference Centre. The event was organised by the Danquah Institute and attended largely by youths affiliated to the National Patriotic Party (NPP); TESCON.
Dr. Kobby Mensah believes that the platform the Vice President picked forced him to askew his speech for applauds from party faithfuls rather than choose a more national platform.
The academician said: “That was a Propaganda platform. The fact is that majority of Ghanaians wanting to hear from you, your perspective because we know your stance on e-levy, we know your position on the economy. We know what you have said in the past about the economy and we know what we are experiencing now.
So if you want to respond to those concerns or these kind of issues, then of course you do not do it on a base platform”, he added.
For the lecturer, the event was a quasi-candidature launch for Dr Bawumia into the party’s primaries to come.
“What happened there was about him trying to launch, so to speak, the competition. Obviously, he is facing some internal competition going forward into their primaries”.
Moving on, the researcher understands that the use of data in presentations as that of the Vice President’s recently is not all objective.
By this, he said: “Again, the resort to data is another way of nodging us to sort of believe in their thinking. Because everybody thinks that data is objective reality.
Speaking on the Big Issue today on Citi fm, the Political Marketing specialist questioned how the data depicts the reality in people’s lives.
“And so he keeps saying ‘oh the data says, the data says’. But the data is not speaking to people’s reality on the ground. We keep saying it. You keep referring to the data, consistently the data has not reflected into the people’s lives. You keep making reference to cheaper borrowing in this country, are the people actually getting access to loans?. That’s the question” Dr. Kobby questioned.
The lecturer would have preferred the Vice President had not spoken, for he is being used to depict a false reality.
“So they are using Bawumia as a source of truth to paint a reality that does not exist, frankly. So for me there was no need for him to speak. Of course, finance minister has spoken, the President has spoken. But why would he by all means speak. Because they think that he is a source that people probably believe. And he has been doing this since 2016”.
