Two-term General Secretary and Field Marshall of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Daniel Kwaku Botwe, affirmed his status as the frontrunner of the jammed race for the party's presidential ticket when he confidently declared that he is going to secure a first round victory come Congress day.
Several analysts and senior political journalists have predicted that a first-round victory for any of the twenty flagbearer-aspirants is just an impossibility. But Mr. Botwe, also known as the 'Field Marshall,' for his accomplished political strategies, told The Chronicle in an exclusive interview at his plush Kanda office that he was sure of a first round victory.
He disclosed that he had so far toured nine out of the ten regions, explaining that the mission for those tours was mainly to first, confirm his intention to run for the presidential slot of the party and second, to debunk the claims that he was just in to campaign for someone else.
"So far the response has been exceptionally good. Well, all aspirants will tell you they are getting good responses from delegates but those of us who have always been in the trenches with the foot soldiers and delegates of the party can understand their mood and know them better. So when I say I am getting the needed support I know exactly what I am talking about," the 49-year-old Anum Boso-born politician told the paper.
Dan Botwe's mother comes from Asuogyaman and he commands a strong following from the area as well. Dan Botwe is widely accepted as a clean man when it comes to corruption and he had the opportunity to serve as a Minister of State just for a year. Many wonder how he has been meeting the resource requirement for his campaign. When asked the Question, Dan said, "it is not the question of having resources but it is that of being resourceful."
He told The Chronicle that there were several people who shared his vision and were prepared to support him, stressing that, that should explain how he had been in a position to meet the requirements for him to go through the campaigning.
"There are places that I visit that after meeting with the people, the little that I offer them as transport, some of them will return it to me and say I should use it for fuel just because they buy into my vision and would want to support me in my campaigning," he explained further.
Independently, Chronicle can confirm that as the constituency chairman told this reporter, they know that Dan is not on the money so they have difficulty taking anything from him.
Question of Experience
President Kufuor has consistently advocated the need for the party to settle on someone who is 'experienced' for a presidential candidate. Different people have given different interpretations to the issue of experience, with most believing that being experienced is synonymous with being a Minister of state for several years.
Many have argued that Mr. Dan Botwe is not someone who is experienced. A recent public Relations masterpiece churned out during the party's international conference in London, in which a genealogical tree of the NPP family portrayed Dr. K. A. Busia as representing the past, President J. A. Kufuor the present and Mr. Dan Botwe as the future, could therefore not pass without a resonating reaction from the Nana Akufo Addo-backed Statesman newspaper that reproduced the PR material and asked: How soon is the future?
Mr. Botwe could not understand why people would think he was not experienced in the first place and secondly, how people even assessed experience.
He said by virtue of his position as General Secretary of the Party and as Minister of Information, he served as a member of Cabinet between 2001 and 2006. "I was a member of cabinet which is the highest decision-making body of Government, participated in decision-making, discussed budgets and security briefings and all that cabinet members do. So if it is about decision-making in governance, how can someone say that I don't have the requisite experience after being on Cabinet for about five years?" he wondered.
He said even if he had not served on cabinet, the presidency is about leadership and decision-making and he was of the view that having led the party as General Secretary for eight years, he had demonstrated enough leadership qualities that should prove to all that he has what it takes to lead the nation.
Mr. Botwe said also that it was important for people to ask themselves what positions people like Ghana's Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and Nelson Mandela of South Africa held before they became leaders of Ghana and South Africa respectively. "These people were never Ministers before becoming presidents and they are acknowledged worldwide as having done great things for their nations," he analyzed.
The former General Secretary, who returned to serve his party after losing his Ministerial job last year, emphasized that in 2001 when the party came to power, he was offered a Ministerial job but he declined the offer just because he thought he had a lot to do to further develop the party.
He said the result was the retention of power in 2004 for a second term.
Tracing his political history, Dan told the paper that he had been an adherent of the Danquah-Busia Tradition since his childhood days. "I am in this tradition unconditionally. Rawlings did not kill any relative of mine for which reason one could say I am in the party because I suffered under Rawlings," he said, emphasizing that he started actual politics in his student days at the then University of Science and Technology (now Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology), where he became the Secretary of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS).
Separate interviews with different potential delegates of the party saw Mr. Botwe's name featuring prominently. A constituency organizer in Kumasi summed it all up when he said, "it will be very difficult for most of us to see Dan's picture on the ballot paper and go ahead to vote for someone else. In fact even if I have been campaigning for someone, on the d-day if I see Dan's picture on the ballot paper I will vote for him because some of us know what he has done for the party."
