Last week followed the path of previous ones when some National Democratic Congress (NDC) elements described us as doing the bidding of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).
The DAILY GUIDE revelation about the over seventy thousand copies of the Africa Watch magazine with a story uncomplimentary of the free SHS and President Akufo-Addo waiting to be distributed gratis in the country hurt the NDC beyond words.
Raymond Poku aka Steven Mallory has been a loyal friend of the former President and although the Akufo-Addo health module which both agreed to use as a campaign weapon failed to change the decision of Ghanaians, he is ready to try something else-demonising the free SHS.
Former President John Mahama’s nightmare, the free SHS must be given a bad name and hanged if possible. This is what the latest edition of the vile edition is about.
In her attack of our story, Joyce Bawah Mogtari spokesperson for the former President, composed her script without thinking and ended up spilling ink over the paper.
For the umpteenth time, she and her bosses have described our paper as being a government-sponsored enterprise. Arrant nonsense! This could be a display of ignorance or sheer hypocrisy or even both. The ownership of the DAILY GUIDE has never been in doubt and for Joyce or her boss to bask in such mischief is to display once more an evidence of their desperation and insincerity. Call it post-election loss traumatic syndrome.
Ghanaians have countenanced such developments time without number and are now better primed to differentiate the truth from the lies. Those associated with rampant lies can hardly be trusted more so when such persons are led by a former Chief Executive Officer of the country.
For the information of Joyce and those who charged her to release the statement, DAILY GUIDE is a standard newspaper publishing news items the editorial team deems worthy of disseminating as such.
We have not attained the status of an influential newspaper on the media field by ignoring the factors which constitute best practices. Indeed, we pride ourselves, with all humility, as being the second largest circulating newspaper in the country, the leading private, or if you like, independent newspaper in the country.
Such baseless labels as pasted on us by Joyce cannot stick. The secret of our survivability even in the face of unfounded accusations and hostile business environment under the NDC is our professionalism.
It was not for nothing that our advertisement department received commercials from both sides of the political divide at the height of the electioneering campaign. We would not have been where we are today were we as dunce as they who seek to describe us in terms of only the uncivil will use under the circumstances for a respectable entity such as ours. We owe our teeming readers unquantifiable gratitude for keeping faith in us.
It is the reassuring patronage from these readers coupled with our commitment to abiding by the noble ethics of journalism which stands us apart from the paper rags Martin Amidu labeled ‘Rented Press.’ For the purposes of clarity, we are referring to the so-called newspapers which the NDC sponsored with stolen state resources.
We maintain our position that a project to throw spanners into the wheels of the free SHS with funding originating from the NDC war chest is represented by the lead contents of the Africa Watch awaiting distribution from the house they are being kept. The harder they come, the harder they will fall, in as much as lies and propaganda remain the cornerstone of their political enterprise.