In recent years, governments in Ghana have been presenting manifestos to electorates so they buy into their vision, aims and policies in order to vote for them. In the run-off to the 2016 general elections in Ghana, the political parties launched their manifestos which contained promises covering the various sectors of the economy. In this paper, I critique the 2016 manifestos of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the two leading political parties in Ghana, with regard to their attitude towards the creative arts. I attempt to answer the question of what assumptions underlie the political promises towards the creative arts and how they play out in their implementation. I employ a qualitative content analysis to critically examine the political promises of both the NDC and the NPP. In critiquing the 2016 political promises, I review past manifestos of the NDC and the NPP concerning the creative arts vis-à-vis their level of implementation. My findings show that the NDC and the NPP have great political ideas towards the creative arts. However, they fail to enumerate on when and how they were going to implement and finance such promises. I, therefore, conclude that for governments to be accountable for their promises towards the creative arts, they should give explicit explanations to the promises and provide concrete time lines indicating when and how such political promises will be implemented.
Keywords: Political promises. Creative Arts, Political parties, Governments