Botchwey Report: A Big Disaster To NDC – Says Nii Lantey

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] member of the committee that investigated what actually caused the massive defeat of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in election 2016 has said that any attempt to release the committee’s report to the public would spell doom for the party.

According to Edwin Nii Lantey Vanderpuye, who is the NDC Member of Parliament (MP) for Odododiodioo in Accra, the party’s leadership should not succumb to public pressure, especially the media, to release the report since it would be “disastrous” to do so. He said the content is not palatable, and so if it gets to the public the NDC would be finished as a political party.

The continuous publication of the report of Prof. Kwesi Botchwey’s 13-member Committee is causing uneasy calm in the largest opposition party.

The massive leakage has undoubtedly dazed the party’s leadership, which has been running away from the content, with some of the members claiming that what the media have been publishing – particularly DAILY GUIDE– are all fake.

The report paints a damning picture of how the NDC lost the 2016 elections, exposing the weaknesses in the party’s structure.

It describes former President John Mahama as a ‘movie star’ and ‘naked’ as he was not in tune with the reality on the ground.

Although some leaders of the NDC are denying the contents of the report – which are indicting some of its top officers – the bigwigs of the party are refusing to make public what they term the ‘accurate’ report.

They have insisted variously that the publications are false; but are at the same time, busily implementing the recommendations of the report on the unpopular biometric registration, which DAILY GUIDE earlier published.

Inferior Tactics

Nii Lantey Vanderpuye told Joy FM in Accra on Thursday that the media were using ‘inferior’ tactics to put pressure on the NDC leadership to release the report.

“What these people are doing is communist inferior tactics to compel us to put the report out there,” Mr. Vanderpuye said, adding, “I can say as a member of the committee that anything that possibly will induce us, coerce us or push us to put the original report out will spell the doom of the party, and I will never recommend that.”

He confirmed the existence of an executive summary of the report which DAILY GUIDE has been serializing.

“We’ve done an executive summary which has been made available for public consumption, but the report itself is an in-house medicine to heal us,” he said.

“It’s for us and our own consumption and not for somebody else. When the NPP did their report, did they put it out in the public domain? Why are they expecting us to put ours in the public domain? We will never do that. They are doing this to get us to put out the original report,” he charged.

“We’ve used wisdom and intelligence to craft a report that critically diagnoses the problems of the party,” the Odododiodioo MP added.