Daily Guide's publication on 'leaked BNI report' bogus - NDC

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has described as bogus, trivial and sheer propaganda, a reportage by the DailyGuide newspaper that the party is losing the 2016 elections per a BNI secret report.

The paper in the Monday June 27, 2016 edition said it has "stumbled on a survey report by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) with support from a pollster (name withheld) which casts doubts on President John Mahama and his ruling National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) ability to win the upcoming general election."

According to the paper, the survey was carried out in all the 10 regions and at the end of the exercise, the report indicated that the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, is ahead of candidate John Dramani Mahama with 51.85 percent while President Mahama followed with 41.52%.

Ivor Greenstreet of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) had 2.10% while the People’s National Convention (PNC) candidate, Dr Edward Nasigri Mahama bagged 1.98% of the total votes cast, with the other parties sharing the remaining 2.55%.

Factors that influenced the survey according to the paper include unemployment, general economic hardship, collapse of business and high incidence of corruption among government officials and a host of others.

The report further gave a regional breakdown of percentage of votes where the NDC failed to garner votes in the Ashanti and Eastern regions as they promised.

But responding to the report by the paper, Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, George Lawson said the report should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

The paper, he opined, lacks credibility hence the party will not waste its time on their story.

He said the paper [which he claimed belongs to the Acting Chairman of the opposition NPP] will not write anything good about the NDC.

"What do you expect from Freddie Blay, the Acting Chairman of the opposition NPP, who owns the paper? The paper will certainly write negative stories about the NDC. The paper will never write anything positive about the NDC. So this is not surprising to the NDC."

When asked if the institution the paper attributed the report to also lacks the credibility to conduct such surveys, he said he does not doubt the credibility of the BNI, but cast doubts on the credibility of the paper.

"Have you read anything positive about the NDC in the DailyGuide before? So we are not surprised. Ignore the story."