The Functional Executive of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has begun implementing the Professor Kwesi Botchwey Committee report on the party’s 2016 election defeat.
This follows a unanimous adoption of the report by the National Executive Committee (NEC) at its meeting presided over by the Chairman and Leader of the party, Mr. Kofi Portuphy, on Wednesday.
The 455-page report was adopted together with its recommendations. By the adoption, the NEC is to go back to the regions, constituencies, and the branches to begin to implement the recommendations and address the pertinent concerns of the grass roots of the party.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Mr Koku Anyidoho, said the NEC agreed that the contents of the 455-page report should be kept within the party and not in the public domain.
Composition of committee
The NEC is made up of the Functional Executive Committee as well as elected party officials from all the 10 regions of the country,i.e. the regional chairmen, the regional secretaries, the regional organisers, women organisers and youth organisers.
Mr Anyidoho said the NEC also decided that the implementation of the report should take place immediately and that all approaches to implementing the report must be done in sincerity and integrity. Task The Kwesi Botchwey Committee, which was tasked to investigate the circumstances that led to the defeat of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the 2016 general election, finally presented its report to the party, with far-reaching recommendations towards its reorganisation.
The 13-member committee has advised the party to put together a peace mission and take steps to restore the integrity of the party’s biometric register and the expanded Electoral College as part of its reorganisation process.
Recommendations
The 455-page report christened: “Listening to the Grassroots”, further recommended to the party to restore and strengthen the capacity and effectiveness of its organs at the branch level, since they were effective tools for unity and cohesion within the party.
Presenting the report to the party in Accra, the Chairman of the Committee, Professor Kwesi Botchwey, said the committee also recommended an improvement in the collation of election results and that the party should take steps to reconnect with its social democratic values and beliefs.
He said the report further called for steps to be taken to strengthen research and intelligence in the party and include coordination in the larger body of the party’s intellectual capacity, which had not been active in the last few years. According to him, the report also called for the scaling up and reinvigorating of the youth and women organisations within the party, in view of demographic changes and urbanisation.