Presidential hopeful of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Ekwow Spio Garbrah wants the Kwesi Botchwey report ‘distilled’ and portions made available to members of the party at all levels to avoid defeat in the next general elections.
He warned that the party is at a “high risk’ of going into the 2020 elections to commit the same mistakes that caused its defeat in 2016, if details of the report are kept among just a few people at the top.
The national executives of the party have refused to make details of the report public, months after it was presented to them. The report is a painstaking work by a committee set up by the party to examine what led to the party’s defeat in the 2016 general elections. Though some media houses have made several publications, which they attributed to the Botchwey report, the party has come out strongly to debunk the media reports.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with 3news.com’s Thomas Vincent Cann, the former trade minister explained that it is important for executives of the party at all levels to get abreast with what “fully and rigorously” contributed to the party’s defeat in 2016.
“Unless the party come to understand properly, thoroughly, the 2016 loss through the Kwasi Botchwey report, we will go into 2020 and probably make some of the same mistakes,” Ekwow Spio Garbrah told 3news.com on Sunday when the NDC held a Unity Walk at Cape Coast.
“The method by which the party members can come to know the nature of the problems we had…it’s like the NDC car has broken down, but if we don’t know which part of the car was weak or what kind of oil should be used to grease which part of the car to make it better, we will go into 2020 to still make mistakes,” he stated.
Though he admitted the there is a challenge in breaking down the report for consumption at the grassroots level, he stressed:
“It is not enough for national headquarters to understand it or for regional chairmen to understand, or for constituency executives to understand it, the largest population of the party is at the branch level, so the branches have to understand the reasons why we lost and what we need to do to correct our mistakes.”
Meanwhile, former president John Mahama has said the party has started working with recommendations in the Kwasi Botchwey report.
For instance, he told party supporters who took part in the walk that branch registration of NDC members will start from November to be followed by the branch elections in February next year.
By Isaac Essel | 3news.com | Ghana