Kojo Oppong Nkrumah
Efforts by some observers to draw similarities between the elections in the United States and Ghana have drawn the attention of Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah.
In the countdown to the US polls, some observers and social media analysts have postulated that in the event of a Republican win with Donald Trump leading the charge this would translate into a triumph for the NPP in Ghana, a conclusion the Information Minister describes as unfounded.
The circumstances in both countries and indeed the personalities leading the charges of their political parties are diametrically opposed, a reality which according to him, renders the analysis unsound.
On the contrary, some think that a win for Joe Biden, the Democrat candidate that is an opposition element in the US, would translate in an NDC victory in Ghana.
While there is a heightened show of knowledge about polls by some so-called pollsters, there are others whose mythical conclusions leave much to be desired.
This is the first time that such comparisons between two different political ambiences are being put out on the media terrain.
Social media is providing an unusual impetus to the weird analysis of the two electoral systems and ambiences.
The analysis appears to have been adopted by the NDC as their leaders follow keenly developments in the US political terrain as if their fortunes are tied to the outcome of the American polls.
The Information Minister, employing convincing logic, said on Oman FM yesterday that there is nothing in common between the Republican candidate Mr. Trump and his Ghanaian counterpart President Akufo-Addo.
He also said the NDC candidate cannot compare himself to the Democrat candidate Joe Biden by any stretch of imagination.
The minister specifically isolated President Akufo-Addo’s positive impacting Covid-19 results, which he said with a touch of diplomacy ‘may be different’ from the Trump situation and reality.
“While Mr. Biden was not rejected at the polls by voters in 2016, Mr. Mahama was massively rejected by Ghanaian voters. While Mr. Biden’s running mate Senator Kamala Harris is an accomplished senator who has added a spark to his candidature, same cannot be said of the NDC.”
“There is no similarity between the elections in the US and elections in Ghana. Their current president was a businessman who became a politician. Our current president, on the other hand, is an astute lawyer and politician.”
“Their president is contesting a former vice-president and not a president who was voted out of power. For ours, Mr. Mahama was voted out of power because he was a president who supervised unemployment, erratic power supply and economic hardship. It is not the same with Joe Biden. So there is a vast difference in the politics of the two countries,” he said.
In a country like Ghana with deficiencies in infrastructure, among others, it is easy to track the achievements of a government.
It was unsurprising therefore when the Information Minister pointed at the myriad tangible achievements, which according to him, would inform the direction of the pendulum on December 7, 2020.
“In 2016, there was a similar myth that you cannot win the presidency if you are not named John. Nana Addo beat John Mahama at the time despite this claim. It is about your hard work and not such comparisons,” he concluded.