A group photo with the representatives
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) was conspicuously missing at an event to ballot for slots for TV3 Elections programme dubbed ‘Elections Command Centre.
The event, which took place at the premises of TV3 in Accra, saw representatives of six political parties balloting for slots to propagate their message and policies during the programme.
The representatives were from New Patriotic Party (NPP), People’s National Convention (PNC), Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Convention People’s Party (CPP), National Democratic Party (NDP) and All People’s Party (APC).
Even though the NDC did not partake in the exercise, the party would be the first to appear on the show on July 25, 2015.
This is because after the six parties with representatives in parliament balloted for slots, it was left with the number one slot which automatically went to the NDC.
NPP, APC, PNC, PPP picked 26th, 27th, 28th and 29th July respectively while CPP and NDP picked 1st and 2nd August to appear on the show.
Winfred Kingsley Afful, who supervised the exercise, said the selection of dates would enable political parties to prepare their candidates or representatives for the programme which is expected to last one hour.
He said that political parties are expected to bring 200 supporters to the TV3’s studio to serve as audience during the programme which would last for one hour.
Mr Afful, who is also the Chief Operations Officer (COO), said the Media General Group, managers of TV3 Network, 3FM, Onua FM and Connect FM, is holding the programme as part of its corporate social responsibility to strengthen and broaden the frontiers of democracy.
“TV3 and our radio partners are offering our platform to all political parties to take advantage of and reach out to their respective followers, among others,” he stated.
According to him, the objective is to provide fair, balanced, credible, authentic, as well as comprehensive coverage of the entire elections.
He added that experts of TV3 would engage the political parties to help them unveil their development agenda for the country during the coverage period.
As part of the Media General Elections Command strategy, the Group has introduced key programmes such as Eye on the Seat, Constituency Link and Kokromoti, among others.
On her part, NPP Deputy Director of Communications, Maame Afua Akoto lauded the MG Group for offering free airtime to the political parties to reach out to Ghanaians.
She gave the assurance that they would take advantage of the programme.
By Solomon Ofori