NDC Missed A Second Chance At A New Life

The outcome of the just ended registration exercise of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) shows that the party, has more learning to do. In fact, the NDC has not learnt from its 2016 defeat.

Thanks to the Kwesi Botwey committee report, the NDC, has a second chance at another life, but NDC being NDC, there is no strategy in the way things are done.

For a party coming from the brink and with less than three years to the next general election, one would have expected that, the membership registration drive, will mark the beginning of the mobilization process going into the 2020 elections.

The party has opened an ideological institute known as the Ghana Institute of Social Democracy, the school is among other things is to identify leaders, who will lead the party one day. Every effort must be made to sustain it, so that succession plans, which have often eluded political parties in Ghana, could be curtailed.

The party, had a bad experience in the run up to the 2016 elections, where a lot of non-members got onto the register, what happened afterwards, will be a topic for another day.

In order to have a clean and credible register, the party decided to embark on a fresh registration exercise, unfortunately what took place in the just ended registration exercise was not different from what had transpired in the past.

I have been looking in vain for signs that the party has learnt its lessons, without which it might continue to languish.

The registration booklet, were in the custody of members, who decided against common sense to keep them to their chest or worse still under their bed.

I live in Madina, and I had a personal experience, when I tried to register, the guy keeping the booklet kept giving me days and different dates, anytime I called him up that I wanted to register.

Isn’t it a joke of the century that, I who has the party at heart and wants to register and be able to pay dues to help in running the party, has to be chasing after the officer, who has been given the register to register members.

The registration exercise, marks the first major step for the party going into the future. Every resource and planning should have gone into it, to make sure that at the end of the day, the party will have a register that, will reflect its true membership.

The purpose for registration members in any organization or grouping, is to help tailor resources in mobilizing members, to achieve the full aims and objectives of the organization, and the NDC being the largest political party in Ghana, must have accurate date on its members.

Elections for various positions, starting from the ward, to branch, to constituency, to regional and then eventually, national, are yet to start. The outcome of the elections and its acceptability depends on the credibility of this register.

I am waiting to hear, the number of members the party, will claim to have registered after assessing the outcome of the registration.

They are media houses that are predisposed to the NDC, the party, should at any time, especially during such an important exercise use them to create awareness, members should be informed through adverts and commercials, which can be gotten free of charge, where to go and who to go and see in the constituencies to go and register.

I work in one of such media houses, no advert, nor did anyone from the executive called to say, can you run this advert for us or can you design some advert with the following guidelines to inform our members of the registration exercise.

The party lost the 2016 presidential election, by over 900,000 votes, to overturn this deficit and add onto to it to win the 2020 election, is not a small feat. It is a herculean task and will go down in history as the biggest comeback in any election.

But to do that, the party needs to get its act together. Doing things half-heartedly is not going to get its any good results, going into an election with an incumbent party.

I wrote time without number in the run-up to the 2016 election, where I asked very critical questions, including whether or not the NDC, still had the 300,000 plus votes it used to win the 2012 election.

If the party gets it wrong with this register, everything that will come out of it, will equally be flawed and it is a testament that, the Kwesi Botwey committee, was a waste of time and resources.

I belong to the school of thought that insists that the NDC, can be restructured without necessarily dismantling it and that means doing things, in an organized and scientific way.

The party, has all it takes to have a credible register that give a true reflection of its true and committed members.

The leaders of the party appear so obsessed with recapturing power in 2020 that the party may just be about to repeat the same mistakes that brought it down in the first place.

The NDC being the largest political party in Ghana is hardly in doubt , because of its extensive local network.

Unfortunately in 2016, it became alienated from its base and the registration exercise was a step towards reinvigorating and energizing the base for the task ahead.

In my opinion, I think the registration exercise was much ado about nothing.