The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) has accused the state-owned media, the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation of favoring the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the allocation of airtime and space for political party campaigning ahead of this year’s election.
The anti-corruption campaigners said its report on the abuse of incumbency and electoral corruption revealed the NDC had been allowed much airtime while other political parties have been given little or no opportunity on the various platforms of the state broadcaster.
Ghana’s 1992 Constitution enjoins state-owned media to give equal access and coverage to all political parties during campaign seasons in the run-up to elections.
But the GII says GBC has not observed the constitutional provision.
Spokesperson the GII’s Coalition on Abuse of Incumbency and Electoral Corruption, Edem Senanu told Citi News, its monitoring between June and August this year showed the NDC had enjoyed massive coverage to the disadvantage of other political parties.
“We found that generally, the information provided by these state media platforms was biased. This is because some political parties were given more time and space by the state media platform in comparison with others and therefore others were at a disadvantage. For the period, June to August, we found that NDC had 49 per cent, NPP had 19 per cent,” he said.
Edem Senanu said although the development may be unintentional, the state broadcaster needs to look at its internal processes to ensure a fair balance and equity in the opportunities offered to all the political parties represented in this year’s elections.
The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), had earlier accused President John Mahama of abusing incumbency and indulging in electoral corruption, for distributing outboard motors to Fisher folks during his campaign tour of the Western Region in August.
According to GII, this abuse of incumbency became apparent when the Spokesperson of the National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) campaign, Joyce Bawa Bogtari, revealed to the media that the distribution of the outboard motors and other items formed part of the state’s interventions.
The Executive Director of GII had previously chided President Mahama for the distribution describing it as worse than vote buying.
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