The John Mahama-led government took the NDC to the 2016 elections confidently that the party will win the elections but shockingly, the NPP led by President AKufo Addo defeated the party at the polls.

Following NDC’s defeat, a 13-member committee led by Professor Kwesi Botchwey was set up to investigate what caused the party’s fall and make recommendations.

The Botchwey committee has now presented a 455-page report to the National Executive Committee of the NDC–making 8 key recommendations.

Via Daily Graphic:

1. That the party puts together a group of credible and eminent members of our party to undertake a peacebuilding 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 afterall 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 organisation.

8. The organisation 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.