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The Chairman of the committee that investigated the cause of the NDC’s defeat in the 2016 elections, Prof Kwesi Botchwey has attributed the party’s defeat to lack of decency, humility and honesty.

He said, division, grievances, bitterness in the party ahead of the general election were as a result of what many saw as manipulation and the breakdown of integrity in the selection of executives at various levels.

Prof Botchwey was speaking at the 6th Atta Mills Commemorative lecture on the theme Ethicality, Democracy and National Development: The Legacy of President Atta Mills.

He said there is no place for ethicality in the conception of governance and described the late Professor Mills as one who was greatly concerned about the ethical principles that should regulate national office holders because he understood that there are implications for the consolidation of national democracy and national development.

The 13-member NDC committee that toured the entire country engaged the rank and file of the party, took their views and concerns on the possible cause of the party’s defeat in the 2016 elections.

The committee’s was however not made public.

Prof Botchwey encouraged the party to always bear in mind the meaning of national democracy and embrace all, especially allies in its strive to restore ethicality in its organisational set up.

“National democracy is a phase in the struggle of ordinary people for justice in which the minds of the people recognise that they cannot win the struggle without allies in all democratic forces in the country but especially in the ranks of the social forces,” he added.

Prof Botchwey urged  party members and executives to curb the state of vengefulness in the country as a way of ethicizing politics.

“We need to step back from the brim and begin to ethicize our politics by curbing the state of vengefulness and recrimination in the land. And the surest way of stirring the tide of this raiding polarisation is to broaden the processes of consultation over credible matters that affect the common good such as our education system, fighting corruption not by replacing one cohorts or group of corrupt leaders with another and above all by tolerating citizens”.

He believed the above is a fitting tribute that better describes the late President Atta mills who sought to do away with the style of politics that downplayed democratic transfer of power.