NDC must share blame of defeat and stop being overly defensive - Ofosu Ampofo

Director of Elections of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Samuel Ofosu Ampofo has urged the leadership and members of the party to share the blame of the party's defeat.

With particular reference to the report by the 13-member Prof. Kwesi Botchwey Committee, Mr. Ofosu Ampofo stated emphatically that the report should be a wake-up call on the party to address the issues that led to their humiliating defeat in the 2016 elections.

According to him, none of the leaders and members of the party should apportion blames or be overly defensive because such posture would only worsen the plight of the party.

“We should share the blame of defeat. Some people are overly defensive and that defensive posture will take us nowhere. We’ve lost elections. If there’s something you should’ve done and you failed to do, admit it. Even if you did your job and people are saying you didn’t, just admit it and let’s all unite. What we need is unity of purpose”.

Mr. Ofosu Ampofo further urged the party to reflect on the Botchwey report and recommendations and work hard to right their wrongs in order to clinch victory, come 2020.

“I’m the Director of Elections, I take responsibility. I believe that there are certain things that ought to have been done which we couldn’t do and that’s the reason we lost. So, after this loss, what I do is more of reflection and what we can do to right the wrongs.”

“The downfall is not the end of his life and a life that is not examined is not worth living”, he added.

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.