The establishment of the Botchwey Committee to enquire into the massive loss by the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) of last December’s general election, to the Akufo-Addo-led then-main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), was widely publicized by the print and electronic media and received with great excitement and fanfare by party stalwarts and the general public at large. The patently pedestrian objective, of course, was to get to the bottom of the causes of such massive and unprecedented debacle and to find solutions for the same.
Ironically, in the wake of the recent publication of the Botchwey Report, the movers-and-shakers of the NDC have banded together to prevent the paying public from learning about the contents of the same. This is a flagrant violation of the laws of the land; because as a publicly subscribed political enterprise, the National Democratic Congress has a bounden obligation to release the Botchwey Report by making the latter available to the general public (See “Kweku Baako Fights Allotey Jacobs, Yaw Boateng Gyan Over Kwesi Botchwey Report” Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 10/25/17). In other words, the leaders of the National Democratic Congress have absolutely no right, whatsoever, to withhold the Botchwey Report from the media and the legitimate consumption of the Ghanaian citizenry at large.
It goes without saying that the contents of the Botchwey Report are far less important than the criminally corporatist decision by the NDC’s leaders to withhold the same from the registered voters and members of the party whose dues and other forms of financial and in-kind contributions towards the upkeep of the Rawlings-minted juggernaut have made the very existence and survival of the party possible. We must also note the fact that just a couple of weeks ago, the NDC’s party executives and stalwarts held a widely reported but secretive meeting at which the cellphones and other information communication gadgets of attendees were temporarily confiscated. This, of course, was to ensure that whatever transpired at this confabulation did not filter into the public domain.
Not surprisingly, these amateur communist tacticians do not appear to have succeeded in keeping the proceedings of their citizen-funded political party from those with an inalienable right to the same. They did not succeed, and democratically and healthily so, because just this past Wednesday, October 25, Mr. Kweku Baako, the Editor-Publisher of the New Crusading Guide, as usual, appeared in the national studios of the Peace-Fm radio station with scanned extracts of the Botchwey Report, to the annoyance and dismay of cynical NDC operatives like Messrs. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, Allotey Jacobs and Yaw Boateng Gyan.
What is equally fascinating here is that rather than exhibit a modicum of integrity by profusely and unreservedly apologizing to the voting public and the Ghanaian citizenry, at large, for abjectly disrespecting them by insulting their intelligence, these political freeloaders decided to castigate the democratically minded operatives among their fold who righteously decided to leak parts of the report to the media.
Now, two things need to happen in order to bring the major NDC players who are quixotically resisting the irreversible tide of democracy to heel and to book. First of all, the general membership of the National Democratic Congress should refuse to pay their membership dues to party assigns and operatives, unless the Botchwey Report, in its fullest form and shape, is released for public consumption. It goes without saying that the Report is public property, because the NDC is a public political entity and/or enterprise. Secondly, the leadership of the party needs to be taken to court to force it to release the people’s property. It is also more than quite clear that the behavior of the NDC leadership has absolutely no place in a modern civilized democratic culture like ours.
It is also clear that the cynical likes of Messrs. Kofi Portuphy, Asiedu-Nketia and Kofi Adams and, of course, the piranha-minded Ahwoi Brothers are hell-bent on committing political suicide. They may have even signed a pact for the effective dissolution of the National Democratic Congress.
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