NDC Unity Walk saw presidential hopeful market ambitions

The Unity Walk organised by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Cape Coast in the Central Region last Sunday to reorganise grassroots support also offered an opportunity for some presidential hopefuls to market their ambitions. 

Visibly among them was Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah.

Some party supporters were clad in Spio-Garbrah-branded T- shirts with the inscription: “I’m a proud member of “Spio-Garbrah Fun Club. Are you? Join today,” while a truck which led the walk had Dr Spio-Garbrah’s banners on it.

Dr Spio-Garbrah said he knew of the T-shirts and posters and told a cross section of journalists after the walk that, “We are now expressing interest until the green light is given when we will make a declaration.”

KB Report

Sharing his views on the Kwesi Botchwey (KB), Dr Spio-Garbrah said there was the need for the party to release the report to members to serve as a guide in the 2020 election, saying, “We can release the report in different forms — unedited, summary- among others.”

“If we don’t examine why we lost, we will go into 2020 with broken limbs and commit the same mistake we made in 2016 if details of the report are kept among just a few people at the top,” he said.

The national executive of the party have refused to make details of the report public, months after it was presented to them.

The report is a painstaking work by a committee set up by the party to examine what led to the party’s defeat in the 2016 general election. Though some media houses have made several publications which they attributed to the KB Report, the party has come out strongly to debunk those reports.

Dr Spio-Garbrah said it was important for party executive at all levels to get abreast of what “fully and rigorously” contributed to the party’s defeat in 2016.

“Unless the party comes to understand properly and thoroughly the 2016 loss through the Kwesi Botchwey Report, we will go into 2020 and probably make some of the same mistakes. It is not enough for national headquarters to understand it or for regional chairmen to understand, or for constituency executives to understand it, the largest population of the party is at the branch level, so the branches have to understand the reasons why we lost and what we need to do to correct our mistakes,” he stressed.

Asked why he was not given the chance to address the supporters, the visibly unhappy Dr Spio-Garbrah said the decision to allow former President John Mahama could only be explained by the organisers of the walk.

 ‘’In 2016, all of us supported one candidate to represent us, but this time a lot of us who are interested will contest when the green light is given next year,” he said.