A pro National Democratic Congress group, Cadres for Accountable Leadership, has given the leadership of the opposition party a 14-day ultimatum to produce the party’s collated results for the 2020 general elections, backed by pink sheets from all the polling stations.
“We are giving the party headquarters, including the National Executive Council, Functional Executive Committee (FEC) and the Council of Elders, two weeks to ensure this is done so that the rank and file will be better served. This is not too hard a task to demand from leadership, pink sheets or collated figures covering the 38,622 polling stations in the 2020 election,” Livingston Pay-Charlie, Convener of the group said.
He gave this ultimatum yesterday at a press briefing at the International Press Centre.
Dangerous path
According to Pay-Charlie, the opposition NDC is currently on a dangerous path of destruction and complete oblivion, if those in leadership are not made to be accountable.
He said, just like the 2016 elections where the leadership of the party failed to collate results for the party, and subsequently swept it under the carpet, the same was witnessed in the 2020 election.
“There was an attempt after the 2016 election when party leadership constituted the Kwesi Botchwey Committee to go into why we lost the election. Indeed, the Committee supposedly went round the country, interviewed party loyalists and submitted a report.
“Sadly, the report of the Committee has not been made public for the past four years, at least to the knowledge of our party’s rank and file who are critical stakeholders. Where is the Kwesi Botchwey Report? Is it gathering dust on the shelves or is being hidden in somebody’s armpit?” he asked.
The group held that any attempt to continue hiding the Kwesi Botchwey report “is anti-democratic, anti-NDC, evil and a total draw-back to combined efforts at societal engineering, growth and development.”
Ultimatum
Making their demands clear, Pay Charlie stated that should the NDC top hierarchy fail to heed their two-week ultimatum, they will resort to a number of mass actions, including nationwide protests across all NDC offices at wards, branches, constituencies, regional and national to demand collective action of resignations by current officers.
He warned that they will embark on “a nationwide sustained campaign to remove from office all party officers, whether hook or crook,” adding: “The NDC faces extinction from our political landscape and we at Cadres For Accountable Leadership won’t allow this to happen.”
He added: “It is important for officers at the national headquarters of the NDC to join us so that we derive the full benefits of accountability by telling our teeming supporters across the country what we collated from our internal mechanism.”
Saving NDC
The group’s convener said if the NDC is to remain a viable force in Ghana’s politics, “nobody must entertain mediocrity, cult worship and sycophancy.
“Let us rise up and speak truth to power no matter whose ox is gored. Our founder Jerry John Rawlings taught us POSITIVE DEFIANCE and this is one of the golden opportunities to light up the flame in his honour. This party must continue the legacy to bequeath Ghana development at all fronts. Comrades, let us not allow the party to die with Founder Rawlings the way the CPP did with Dr. Kwame Nkrumah,” he stated.
He assured party folks that the NDC can win the 2024 elections, if it puts its house in order.
“Demanding for public disclosure of pink sheets or collated figures from the 2020 election is the first step towards reorganizing our party base. At our next engagement, we would be bringing to light why the IT, intelligence, security and strategy units of the party ought to be sharpened.
“For the meantime, our concern is pink sheets from the 2020 Election or better still our own collated results. Ladies and Gentlemen, our 14-day ultimatum begins tomorrow and we shall keep our eyes on the party hierarchy,” he said.
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