The Special Aide to former President John Mahama, Mrs Joyce Bawah Mogtari, has said there is a “gap” within the National Democratic Congress (NDC), as far as internal cohesion is concerned.

She admitted to it in an interview with Hajia Bintu Saana on CTV’s morning show Dwabre Mu on Friday, 25 February 2022.

“I want to call on the NDC, on all of us, that everybody has a contribution; some have [knowledge], some have experience, some have some competencies that even if you become a party executive, you haven’t seen before, so, if you go as an elected official and you think all the work is in your pocket, across the country, [then the work will be difficult]”, she said.

“… This one is a direct appeal to the party activists, supporters, volunteers: Look, where there is no cohesion, the work will be difficult”, he observed.

“Apart from that – I went through about five, six of the Westminster political courses – every political party has a group that thinks for the party”, she added.

Asked if the NDC has that kind of group, Mrs Bawah Mogtari said: “We used to have but I don’t know if all those; you understand”.

When Hajia Bintu wondered if there was no sense of leadership in the party, she said: “There’s leadership but look, we must open up; politics has changed”, adding: “It is not like it used to be”.

“Look at the number of strategies that even the opposition NPP had about polling, about this, about [that]”, she pointed out.

“I remember the first time that I participated in political polling; it was under a man called Carl Silverman. I wasn’t even a branch executive but each time they came to the ministries, they always looked for people who are affiliated to tell them which officers are NPP, NDC because, at that time, they were removing a lot of people from their offices because Kufuor had just [come into power]”, she recalled.

“All of these things were research-based, so, our party, too, must have its people”, the former deputy minister of transport stressed.

“We must start looking at cohesion”, she reiterated.

Asked if there was a gap in terms of internal cohesion, she said: “You can always tell there is some gap”, explaining: “Elected officers, they don’t want to open up to anybody” and have the “Nobody should tell them how to do their job” kind of attitude.

Using her personal experience to buttress her point, Mrs Bawah Mogtari said: “I even sent a message forwarded to me to a very key person in the party; the person called me back and asked me: ‘Ah, why are you forwarding this to me by text? Oh, please, it’s not safe’”.

“What is not safe about a text?” she asked.

“We’ve been told how people monitor our phones and everything”, she added.

Asked by Hajia Bintu if the party has internal problems, she responded: “Tony Aidoo has always been saying something every day: we must learn to speak truth even to our own internal power. We must arrive at a point where; what is it we are looking for? We want power”.

She said: “Today, me, if you ask me, I have no doubt in my mind that President Mahama is actually one of the individuals who has the pulse of Ghana at his fingertips”.

Mrs Mogtari added: “A lot of the lies and propaganda; we have come to see that all that our opponents wanted was power to take whatever was available, even for the poor Ghanaians. Go round the country and see”.