Dr. Kwesi Botchwey, former Finance Secretary and later Minister under the Rawlings regimes is said to be joining the Democratic Freedom Party campaign machine for 2008, with a presidential ambition.

The Ghanaian Observer says Mr. Botchwey, who has been out in the West helping restructure the economies of other Third World countries as a World Bank consultant, is now back in town after a five-year stint with the Bretton Woods institutions.

He previously lost the National Democratic Congress flagbearer contest to Professor JEA Mills.

The former Finance Minister is expected to meet top journalists from the respective media stables, regardless of political hew and shade to market himself.

Dr. Kwesi Botchwey, according to the Ghanaian Observer quoting top DFP sources, “will also be touring constituencies nation-wide in a political chit-chat with activists across the country. He is expected to utilise to good effect his dexterity in communicating in the major dialects spoken in the country, when he meets activists across the country.”

He will also grant interviews and hold a press soiree to share his wider vision for the country besides what he can offer to the nation and its people as a leading member of the DFP.

The campaign tour begins, according to aides, when veteran politician Dr. Yao Obed Asamoah returns from an official European trip to meet with party financiers and open branches of the party abroad.

“Obed, who also suffered persecution and intimidation under the NDC in the contest to renew his mandate as National Chairman of the party, is spending a month in Europe selling the party to a consortium of business people and an electoral funding agency, which is engaged in a programme to help nurture democracies in Africa and enhance stability and territorial security in the various African countries to improve investment and growth prospects on the continent,” according to the paper.

Kwesi Botchwey will be taking a two-week vacation outside Accra, before embarking on the campaign tour of the country together with Dr. Obed Asamoah and his band of 'promoters'.

The former finance minister is also expected to meet President Kufuor, together with a group of consultants to discuss ways of moving Ghana faster towards its economic El Dorado.

The DFP, GO was told, will be ending the inauguration of constituencies nation-wide by the end of June to reposition the party for its next line of strategy, which is the recruitment of parliamentary candidates.

The paper said per field reports it has received, the party's immediate strongholds are the Zongos, Volta North, indigenous Accra, especially the Ga rural constituencies, the three Northern regions and Brong Ahafo.

Kwesi Botchwey resigned from the NDC in 1988 reportedly in protest against excessive spending by one State agency. He contested later as a flagbearer aspirant to lead the NDC in the 2004 elections but lost to Professor Mills.

Dr. Obed Asamoah, who supported Kwesi Botchwey's campaign bid to edge out Mills, also resigned from the NDC to help form the DFP with other NDC stalwarts like Okaidja Adamafio, former Deputy Minister for the Interior; Kwaku Baah, MP in the Third Republic and Bede Zeideng, lawyer and cadre of the NDC.


Source: Ghanaian Observer