A flagbearer hopeful of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Goosie Tanoh has said he restrained himself from the 2016 reelection bid of John Dramani Mahama because he knew the former President was going to lose.

“In 2008 and 2012 I was very much involved. In 2016 we were but not to the extent that we would have liked because we saw the signals,” the former Aide to former President Jerry John Rawlings during the PNDC era told Bola Ray on Starr Chat Wednesday.

“We had some spec services and those spec services didn’t suggest that the outcome would be as positive as was being represented,” he asserted.

According to him, the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) did not win the 2016 elections, saying the NDC rather lost it.

“If you look at the results very carefully, NPP’s actual incremental vote was not that great. But NDC’s drop was pretty substantial particularly in some areas both in terms of turnout from its strong constituencies and also the outturn of the vote,” he said.

He said former President Mahama did the right accepting the ultimate responsibilities for the party’s embarrassing defeat in the 2016 elections.

“I think that anybody who is able to accept responsibility has done the right thing and the correct thing. As a leader you must accept responsibility,” he said.

“It’s his gig. He must execute. If he doesn’t execute he takes responsibility. You can excuse a leader because the people around him are bad. So if he has given that acknowledgement I think it is a good step.”

I wouldn’t join race if I couldn’t win

Touching on the battle to lead the NDC into the 2020 general elections, Mr Tanoh said he would not have joined the flagbearership scramble if he did not believe he would defeat former President Mahama and the other contenders.

“We will not be in it if we didn’t think we could beat him [Mahama]. We will not be in it if we didn’t think we could beat him. I am very clear about that,” he said.

“And I wish him luck and all the other contenders luck as well. But we have our game plan, we have our strategy and the most important thing our message. It is not really about who president Mahama is or who x is or y is? It is about the programme and whether the programme will resonate with the ordinary people of this country, resonates in such a way that they can see hope,” he pointed out.