General News of Tuesday, 22 March 2016

Source: thechronicle.com.gh

President Mahama is mischievous - Casely-Hayford

Sydney Casely-Hayford Sydney Casely-Hayford

A leading member of pressure group Occupy Ghana, Mr. Sydney Casely-Hayford, has described President John Dramani Mahama as a rascal.

In his view, the President had gone to Parliament to play rascality when he presented the State of the Nation Address on February 25, 2016.

Mr. Casely-Hayfordl in an interview with Reynolds Agyemang on JEM FM in Kumasi last week Mondayl said on “Pae mu ka”(Say it as it is) programme that the President had gone there (Parliament) to crack jokes and demonstrate rascality.

“What kind of rascality is this?” he queried.

He claims he had lost confidence in the President, because the Head of State’s political capital has waned, since he is always trivialising national issues which have depopulated his track record.

The social commentator said Ghanaians did not put him (President) there for him to indulge in rascality, but to give us serious decisions on serious matters. Mr. Casely-Hayford further criticised the President’s description of errors in the 59th Independence anniversary brochure as having been caused by the printer’s devil.

The President had said the errors were avoidable, and attributed them to the printer’s devil, but Casely-Hayford disagrees.

He said significant mistakes like President Uhuru Kenyatta being described as President of Ghana could not be caused by a printer’s devil, and that either the President does not understand it himself, or regards Ghanaians as illiterates.

“These are serious errors; errors of magnitude; serious deviation from serious matters, and he does not have to trivialise it as the printer’s devil,” Mr. Casely-Hayford told listeners of the radio station.

According to him, the embarrassing situation thus created, as a result, only goes to portray a certain level of incompetence, or “I don’t carerism” being wrought on Ghanaians, which, he said, is “so unfair and so wrong.”

The Occupy Ghana guru disagreed with the host of the programme that the situation that has made Ghana an object of ridicule was an omen.

He stressed: “It’s not an omen. It could be sabotage or error,” and asked Ghanaians not to attribute it to superstition. Mr. Casely-Hayford also said the presidential directive for the Chief of Staff to investigate the brochure brouhaha was not right.