Financial Analyst and Social Commentator, Sydney Casely-Hayford has stated that he will retract and render an unqualified apology to Parliament for scathingly berating it.
He said this after the MP for Kumbungu urged leadership of the House to drag him before it to answer charges of contempt.
Mr. Casely-Hayford speaking recently at a summit on “The Economic and Political Rise of Africa,” said the country’s lawmaking chamber is irrelevant and unimportant and that if he had the chance he would destroy it.
“The first thing I will do if I had the opportunity is to break down parliament. We don’t need it,” he said.
According to him, the country’s third arm of governance is full of spendthrifts “spending money like crazy, making stupid decisions, and passing stupid laws. They don’t read the papers that they are given, they don’t think through what the challenges are.”
Enraged by the comments by the Financial Analyst, the MP for Kumbungu in the Northern region, Ras Mubarak urged leadership of parliament to haul him before it for contempt.
“So Mr. Speaker, I wish therefore to call on this honourable house to invite the gentleman [Mr. Hayford] to appear before the house to answer contempt charges,” pleaded Mr. Mubarak. According to him, Mr. Casely-Hayford’s comments are “damn right offensive and out rightly benighted.”
In his reaction, however, the maverick Financial Analyst admitted that his comments were untoward.
“My comments went a little too far because in the heat of passion of what we were discussing, it was important that I made a strong delivery and if parliament is upset because I used certain words that did not fly the content and crass of what I was trying to say [which] is still the very same thing I am saying now,” he told Starr News’ parliamentary correspondent, Ibrahim Alhassan Thursday July 13, 2017.
He added “unreservedly an apology will be made and I will make it to the media shortly” and also responding to a direct question regarding retracting his comments, he said “I will retract officially and in print.”
According to him, his comments were not to incite people against the lawmaking chamber.
“This has got nothing to incite. What am I going to incite them? If I had wanted to incite them I wouldn’t have mentioned the fact that we need ten additional parliaments across the country. Why would I dissolve one and then create ten? It has got nothing with inciting anybody.” he noted.
