By William
Yaw Owusu
Thursday,
October 05, 2017
The John Dramani Mahama presidency schemed for Kofi
Portuphy and Kofi Adams to become National Chairman and National Organizer
respectively of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) - a factor
the Kwesi Botchwey Committee claims contributed to the disastrous defeat of the
party.
Immediately that was done the party’s machinery
collapsed and never recovered, according to the Professor Kwesi Botchwey
Committee that investigated why the National Democratic Congress (NDC)
embarrassingly lost the December 7, 2016 general elections.
Sycophantic
Executives
The 65-page Executive Summary of the 455-page report
says with the election of the two leading officers, the party’s hierarchy
became sycophantic and did the bidding of the presidency instead of concentrating
on how the party would remain in office.
“Kofi Adams and Kofi Portuphy were beneficiaries of
the presidency machinations during the Kumasi congress to elect them,” the
report revealed on Page 27.
It states on page 28 that “After the party congress
in Kumasi, the party hierarchy collapsed,” saying “party hierarchy became sycophantic
in its relationship with the government.”
Mr Kofi Adams unseated incumbent Yaw Boateng Gyan as
National Organizer while Mr. Portuphy removed then chairman, Dr. Kwabena Adje,
aka Wayo Wayo or Cat Hunter from office in an acrimonious congress of the party
held in Kumasi on December, 2014.
Mr Yaw Boateng Gyan yesterday announced that he was
staging a comeback for the position he lost. It is not clear if this time round
John Mahama will throw his weight behind him.
Yaw
Boateng Gyan, who was a ‘darling boy’ of the late President John Evan Atta
Mills - having been appointed as a presidential staffer at the Office of the
President - was stripped of the position and all the respects and pecks passed
on to Kofi Adams.
According to Mr Boateng Gyan, the NDC needs a devout and hard
working person to secure victory in 2020.
He was part of the leadership that returned the NDC to power in
the 2008 and 2012 elections, but lost bitterly to Kofi Adams through the purported
influence of John Mahama, polling 734 votes as against Kofi Adams’s 2,543 votes
that left him (Gyan) wondering why NDC delegates changed a winning team.
He said he has had broad consultation with party members and many
of them want him back as the national organiser.
In the case of Dr Kwabena Adjei, DAILY GUIDE learnt that he
incurred the displeasure of former President Mahama for speaking out his mind
at Cabinet meetings, warning about the imminent Armageddon, looking at the way
the then president was handling the affairs of state.
Sources indicate that he was not charitable to the NDC
administration as he called a spade a spade in a brunt fashion, particularly on
the way the former president’s brother, Ibrahim Mahama, was creating a negative
image for the party and the NDC government.
When the time came therefore, Mr Kwabena Adjei was replaced with
the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) boss - Mr Kofi
Portuphy.
According to sources, Kwabena Adjei, who
sat in cabinet as party chairman, was at a point allegedly branded ‘drunkard’
just because of his frankness.
Apart from the former president who was described as
living a life of a ‘movie star’ in the run-up to the crucial general elections,
the report indicated that the NDC never lost the elections, rather it was John
Mahama.
The report said President Maahama let himself down
with his attitude towards the campaign. “John Mahama lost the elections and not
the NDC.
“President Mahama ignored the Akuse strategy. It
included no flamboyant campaign, no amorphous group etc.”
Solomon
Nkansah
The report also notes that the reign of Solomon
Nkansah as the Communications Officer of the party was disastrous.
Mr Solomon Nkansah was the National Propaganda
Secretary before the NDC turned the propaganda office into communications when it
moved into its $20 million office complex at Adabraka, Accra in 2014 - which party
gurus vehemently denied owning.
“Solomon Nkansah as Communications Director was a
disaster,” the report observes on Page 28.
Party
Disconnection
According to the report, there was a “disconnection
between the government and the party,” and also there was “disconnection
between the party and the grassroots.”
It claims that there were palpable divisions in the
party and cited Afram Plains in the Eastern Region as typical example.
The 13-member committee heard how the party’s
hierarchy ignored warnings that the Lawra seat in the Upper West Region and those
of other constituencies were falling into the hands of the opposition but
nobody did anything about it, according to the report.
Greed
& Selfishness
“NDC was its own enemy. Greedy, selfish, dismissive,
arrogance of power were the party’s undoing as captured on Page 27.
The report observes that elders in the party were ‘ignored’
and the party lost its youth wing in the tertiary institutions to the
opposition at the time.
Amorphous
Groups
According to the report, some NDC gurus, with the
blessing of the presidency, formed many groups to campaign for the second term
bid of President Mahama, but none of those involved were real party members.
“None of the amorphous groups were NDC members;” the
report reveals on page 28, adding shockingly that “NPP (then opposition)
infiltrated the NDC’s ranks and built these groups to execute their agenda
within the NDC.”
Groups likes Girls Girls for Mahama, Zongo Girls for
Mahama, Zongo for Mahama, Youth for Mahama, Celebrities for Mahama, Mahama
Ladies, I Choose JM, Ambassadors for Mahama, Doves for Mahama and others, were
formed with massive resources at their disposal to prosecute the agenda which
failed woefully in the end as Ghanaians overwhelmingly rejected Mahama.
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