NDC is a 'sick party' in need of medical attention - Kweku Baako

Abdul Malik Kweku Baako says the Professor Kwesi Botchwey recommendations in their report reveals the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as a "sick party" and needs urgent medical attention.

According to him, the NDC is still suffering from the rippling effects of their defeat in the 2016 elections, hence finding it difficult to coordinate their communication systems and restructuring of the party.

The Botchwey report made several recommendations to help fortify the NDC as it restructures itself to contest the 2020 elections.

Among the eight recommendations is that the party should put together "a group of credible and eminent members of our party to undertake a peace building and healing of the country".

The Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper noted that if the NDC doesn't have any disease, there won't be any need for healing.

“It means the party is sick and needs some medical attention. So, they’re putting together some doctors to examine the party to find out if it needs a surgical operation or something else. This is a sick party. This is a party that’s ailing.

"Why do you build peace if there’s peace already? There’s something wrong in the party…They’re cracks in the party now”.

Speaking on Peace FM's Kokrokoo in relation to the report, Mr. Baako also called on the NDC to make the report public or else be prepared for it being subjected to various interpretations that will make it difficult for the party to build a defence.

He held strongly that the NDC will face a major challenge with concealing the contents of the 455-page report, saying "this is the challenge they’re going to face with the non-disclosure of the contents of the report whilst you do the presentation of it. Now, having given us some recommendations, you’re going to be consistently challenged by coming out with ineffective rebuttals of things we say…

"Whether you like it or not, you’re going to be confronted with this particular challenge of people making their interpretations and deductions of the recommendations, and each time you’re confronted with that. Unfortunately, your rebuttal is not in the report or if it’s in the report; you haven’t shown us...Make the report public so that we see that indeed there’s integrity to the rebuttal”.

Read below are the recommendations contained in the report:

1. That the party puts together a group of credible and eminent members of our party to undertake a peace building and healing of the country.

2. That the party takes steps to restore the integrity of the biometric register and the expanded Electoral College.

3. We recommend that steps be taken to restore the capacity and effectiveness of the party's organs especially at the branch level where we believe these organs are the most critical because they are the party's immediate connection to the people, we are after all a truly mass party.

4. We also have recommendations on ways we can and must improve the collation of election results.

5. We also believe that steps ought to be taken by the party to reconnect itself properly to our social democratic roots and the principal actors in these social democratic roots.

6. We recommend that steps ought to be taken to strengthen research and intelligence in the party. This should involve crowding in a larger body of the party's intellectual base which has not been particularly active in the past; this will help to support the party's research capacity.

7. There are recommendations that the party will scale-up and re-invigorate its work in the area of youth organization.

8. The organization of women, we note that significant changes have taken place in the country's demographic profile and that the party ought to take notice of this and all the implications of these changes.