Story on NDC defeat report leakage was terribly false - Prof. Botchwey

The Chairman of the 13-member committee set up to review the defeat of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Prof. Kwesi Botchwey has said the 67-page report which was said to be their work was terribly fake.

He was responding to a question on the side-lines with Rainbow Radio 87.5Fm after the committee presented its 455 page report on the party’s defeat, on whether the committee became worried when news broke that its report had leaked. According the committee was not disturbed at all because they knew the report which was reported leaked contained no truth in it.

The Today’s Newspaper some few months ago published that it has laid hands on a leaked report by the committee which said for instance, at one of the committee’s meetings held outside Accra last month to put finishing touches to the report, its sources said the report nearly hit a snag as former President Dramani Mahama’s loyalists vehemently opposed the recommendation of having a new presidential candidate for the party in 2020.”

According to the paper, excerpts of the report also recommended that any future presidential nominee of the NDC must work in tandem with the party structures by bringing on board national and regional executives, polling agents and those at the grassroots to help in campaigning.

On why President Dramani Mahama should be replaced, the paper said the report pointed out that the 2016 flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who is now the President, used his incorruptible mantra to the disadvantage of “our (NDC’s) candidate who was alleged to have endorsed corruption in his government.”

“The NPP won because their leader was acclaimed to be incorruptible while ours was tainted with corruption and bribery, so going into the 2020 elections we (Kwesi Botchwey Committee) propose that we elect somebody who can also claim to be incorruptible,” the newspaper said the report observed.

But responding to this, Prof. Botchwey said, ‘’we knew we were acting in a principled way, we knew there was no leakage from the committee and above all we knew that, it was entirely fake. There was never a 67 page report that said anything they claimed. He described the report as comprenhensive and something that covers everything that caused their defeat.

He also dispelled claims that the committee recommended for the party to elect a new presidential candidate aside former president John Dramana Mahama saying: “It was not party of our mandate as a committee to recommend who should or should not stand as the party’s candidate in 2020, so, we didn’t recommend any such thing; not for former President Mahama or anybody else. It simply was not part of our mandate.’’