A former candidate for the flagbearership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, says his party needs to develop new strategies based on fresh thinking to win the 2008 election. A statement issued in Accra on Wednesday by his office said the NDC has good prospects of winning the election under Professor John Evans Atta Mills as long as the entire party rallied behind him and there was innovative thinking to freshen the Party’s image and standing with the electorate. He is reported to have told a meeting of the party’s UK and Ireland branch in London that with the election of Prof. Atta Mills as flagbearer, the NDC should this year concentrate on strengthening its organisational structures and fund-raising mechanisms. He said the branch should hold a workshop at which it would make presentations that would be fed into the national strategy planning process. Dr Spio-Garbrah, who is the Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, said there were many issues that the NDC leadership and the rank and file needed to reach common grounds on, which could best be facilitated through seminars or workshops. These included issues relating to party ideology and philosophy, organisational cohesiveness, leadership and succession planning, mentoring and team work. Other issues are communications and propaganda, research and intelligence, fundraising and programme financing and coordinating international support from the Diaspora. Dr Spio-Garbrah said the Party also needed to analyse and examine the electoral process and Election Day management, techniques for strengthening relations with the various constituencies, such as women, the youth, teachers, public servants, trade unions, business leaders and traders, traditional authorities, religious organisations and various categories of floating voters. He said after the December Congress chose Prof. Mills as flagbearer, he decided to remain quiet for some time “so that the flagbearer could have unfettered recognition as Party leader”. Dr Spio-Garbrah said while the NDC might have lost some recent bye-elections, these occurred mainly because those constituencies had become strongholds of the New Patriotic Party and the NDC might have approached those elections with “a business as usual attitude”. “I am convinced that when the Party’s leadership sits down and tests various ideas and strategies in the structured format of a seminar, it will become clearer that the Party needs to do many things quite differently in order to win the 2008 Election.” Source: GNA