Adjust manifestos to suit research - IMANI

Policy think tank IMANI has advised political parties to adjust their manifestos in order to suit research findings which indicate among other things that the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) is the most unfavourable social intervention project that Ghanaians want discontinued.

The research, which sampled 1,025 views and opinions nationwide also found that education and health are very important to Ghanaians with the National Health Insurance Scheme being the most favourable social intervention to be continued.

Head of Political and Economic Affairs at IMANI, Patrick Stephenson, speaking to Class News said: “Political party manifesto is not anything that is cast in stone. If the current conversations we’ve had between the two major parties is anything to go by, we hear one political party saying that the other had stolen their ideas so clearly there is room for some level of adjustment and some level of engagement from all the political parties’ point of view.”

“In any case, I don’t suspect that our political parties go through the rigour and thought we go through to arrive at some of these conclusions. So yes they may have to reconsider. …It’s only to get them to rethink. … The NDC and the NPP have a possibility of forming a government in 2017 [but] it’s just the NDC that has launched a manifesto.

It is possible you’ll find some of the themes we have discussed in this report resonating there…in some cases it might not be changing the political canvass or manifesto...”