Dear NPP in govt, public relations is a paid-for professional service

The New Publisher, in this editorial, is in perfect agreement  with Mr. Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, a political strategist and founder of the Danquah Institute in his call on the New Patriotic Party (NPP) led Government to step up its Public Relations tactic.

This call is long overdue and The New Publisher has repeated in several editorials the glaring fact that the NPP, when in government, never gets its communications and information dissemination strategy right; a situation that makes it seem the party in Government is not working hard enough as it ought to.

This shortfall is most manifest when the party is in its second term and this second term of an NPP-led-Government under Nana Akufo-Addo is no different. It would not be an exaggeration to say it is even worse than the NPP’s second term under President John Kufuor.

The party seem to take for granted the fact that effective Public Relation and information dissemination goes beyond sending passionate party officials to appear on radio and television talk shows to yell out one-sided-bias party positions as  though there is no difference between political propaganda  and effective Public Relations.

Meanwhile the same party is blessed with some of the best brains in Public Relations including but not limited to professionals like Oboshie Sai-Cofie, Madam Elizabeth Ohene, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Nana Akomea and several others.

However,  in what appears to be a self-conceited complacency that has feasted into a rather poorly-coordinated malfunctioning PR machinery, with symptoms of a chronic communication malady in need of an urgent cure.

No human being is born a PR professional. It is a skill that requires training and constant training and the paradigms of how it functions is not static.

Having the information is one thing; knowing how to effectively communicate it to a target audience to achieve the desired effect is another thing.

It is even worse when PR is handled by non professionals who are not well equipped with the requisite information.

The worst of all is having the information and not sharing it for whatever inexplicable reasons.

He who feels it knows it all; therefore it is vexatious, under the guise of effective PR, to talk down to electorates who complain of hard times and to even do so with scorn and disdain.

But unfortunately, that is what has become the technique of many a government cum party communicators.

If government, for example has cut down on its expenditure by some 30 percent, as many Ghanaians have called for, why communicate such a brilliant initiative of enormous sacrifice in whispers?

If due to external forces, the local currency has gone haywire at a time the skyrocketing cost of fuel has affected prices of essential commodities, and resulted in a double jeopardy for the average Ghanaian, what has been Government’s sustained coordinated strategy of effectively explaining the situation, and telling what the immediate, short, and long term solutions are?

You cannot continue to keep such critical information to your chest and expect the citizens to not ask for answers.

And for the records, the media does not owe Government a duty of PR. The NPP ought to get that straight.

News and PR are not one and same thing. You cannot continue to blame the media for focusing on the hardships.  You cannot also expect the media, on its own, to go look for answers to the growing concerns of the people.

PR is planned, deliberate, coordinated and maintained by persons who are trained and tasked for that service.

Government better up its PR game or continue to suffer the political consequences barely two years and nine months to general elections in a country that voted for a hung Parliament.