Those who said our committee was unnecessary were wrong - Prof. Botchwey

The Professor Kwasi Botchwey Committee tasked to investigate the cause of the defeat handed the National Democratic Congress in the 2016 elections has described the view held by some party supporters that the 13-member committee was unnecessary, as unfortunate.

The committee chair, in an interview after they presented the 455-page report to the National Executive Committee (NEC), yesterday [Monday] said it was wrong for those who held that view to do so because it was necessary for the party to setup the committee to review the cause for the party's defeat.

‘’When the committee was formed there were many who thought we didn’t need a pathologist to establish the fact, and I think that view was wrong.’’

Using the analogy of a man with a long history of heart disease; who falls on his knees and dies, he said, it will be obvious that the person may have died due to heart failure but when a pathologist is employed to conduct an investigation, it could be established that, the person may died as a result of food poison or something else.

‘’It pays to do a rigorous analysis of what happened in each and every constituency,’’ he said.

The NDC after the terrible defeat of the party in 2016 set up the committee to review why the party lost. The committee were also tasked to make recommendations for the party.

Below are the recommendations:

1. That the party puts together a group of credible and eminent members of our party to undertake a peacebuilding and healing of the country.

2. That the party takes steps to restore the integrity of the biometric register and the expanded electoral college.

3. We recommend that steps be taken to restore the capacity and effectiveness of the party's organs especially at the branch level where we believe these organs are the most critical because they are the party's immediate connection to the people, we are afterall a truly mass party.

4. We also have recommendations on ways we can and must improve the collation of election results.

5. We also believe that steps ought to be taken by the party to reconnect itself properly to our social democratic roots and the principal actors in these social democratic roots.

6. We recommend that steps ought to be taken to strengthen research and intelligence in the party. This should involve crowding in a larger body of the party's intellectual base which has not been particularly active in the past, this will help to support the party's research capacity.

7. There are recommendations that the party will scale-up and re-invigorate its work in the area of youth organisation.

8. The organisation of women, we note that significant changes have taken place in the country's demographic profile and that the party ought to take notice of this and all the implications of these change.