A group affiliated to the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has kicked against moves to make former President John Mahama the party’s flagbearer for the 2020 elections.

Describing the suggestion as groundless, the group by name “Bring Back NDC’ warned that the party will lose the 2020 elections should Mahama be made the party’s flagbearer.

According to the group, the former president’s actions and inactions led to the party’s humiliating defeat in the 2016 elections and that he remains “an electoral liability in 2020 and the near future.”

“Therefore, our victory ahead of 2020 is not guaranteed with him [Mahama] despite the false-starts of the Nana Addo-Bawumia government,” the group warned in a recent statement.

Below is the full statement

We can’t win 2020 with John Mahama

It’s been seven months and three weeks since the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was humbled in an election which it incessantly proclaimed to be in comfortable lead and cruising to victory. The electoral defeat as painful as it is was not unavoidable. This claim is buttressed by the Report of Professor Kwesi Botchwey Committee.

NDC is currently entangled in blame game and deepening interest-based divisions pitching the young against the old; women against men; and former appointees against never-appointed; all in the name of salvaging the sinking image of the party. In the midst of this, a sincere soul-searching introspection indicates there is a silver lining beneath the storm: an opportunity to regroup, re-strategize and recapture power in 2020! The Main Opposition Party is at cross-roads and there is a battle not just among ages but between aspiring heirs of Social Justice and Sustainable Development against Protégées of Nepotism, Cronyism and Corruption. Legacy versus Property! And Indifference is in the defense of the latter. The very utterances, actions, and inactions of Former President John Dramani Mahama led us into this conundrum and he remains an electoral liability in 2020 and the near future. Therefore our victory ahead of 2020 is not guaranteed with him despite the false-starts of the Nana Addo-Bawumia Government.

The way forward for the party, in our view, as informed by an invaluable insight of private and public discourses, is for the rank and file to eschew all forms of pride, prejudices and discriminations, and dispassionately discuss and decide on party issues especially on internal elections. And this must be an all-hands-on-board affair chiefly aimed at reclaiming the Prestigious Principles of Probity and Accountability. We particularly encourage the old party-guards who were neglected to put behind the past and join hands with party leadership to work for victory in the next elections. The neglect of the grassroots and the youth must also be addressed if we are to win election 2020.

Bring Back NDC (BBN) is a composition of ordinary party members across the country whose membership of the party are based among other things on Family Background; Geographical Location; Professional History; Political Role Models; Circumstances of the Emergence of the Party and so on. We may be young and less visible for now but we are armed with the believe that one doesn’t need to be a Methuselah to make change in the party in particular and the world at large but with Vision and Mission, it is permissible and possible! WE HAVE JUST BEGUN!! EYE ZU, EYE ZA!!!.

Signed

HANNAN H. LEGEND