Disregard ‘false’ Botchwey committee report - Ahadzie

The fact-finding Kwesi Botchwey Committee of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has not made any adverse findings which reflect badly on former President John Mahama’s chances of running for President again, the party’s Director of Research Dr William Ahadzie has said.

“It’s false, completely false,” Dr Hadzie told Class News on Monday, 8 May in response to a publication by the Today newspaper that a 67-page report yet to be released by the 13-member committee which probed the NDC’s loss in the 2016 polls, found that Mr Mahama’s failure to present himself as an incorruptible person, is one of the major reasons he lost to Nana Akufo-Addo.

The paper 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.

It also published that the report noted that: “Our own media organisations were made to starve while the then pro-opposition media were given resources, with the view that they would leak information to us, but nothing of that sort happened.”

However, Dr Ahadzie told Class News that the Committee is yet to finish its report and present it to the party, thus, the publication must be disregarded.