Mahama speaks carelessly - Casely-Hayford

Social commentator Sydney Casely-Hayford has said President John Dramani Mahama has been speaking carelessly these days, a situation the financial analysts fears could haunt the president in the long term.

To him, Ghanaians were still grappling with economic challenges and hardships, therefore, in his view, it would be best for Mr Mahama to speak clearly without making ambiguous statements.

“President Mahama is being a bit careless in the way he expresses himself and I think he is opening the door to too much abuse and too much misinterpretation to what he is trying to say,” Mr Casely-Hayford said on Saturday April 23.

To him: “Everybody is on high alert and wants a solution and [an] end to all the economic crises.”

Mr Casely-Hayford was a guest on Citi FM’s news analysis programme ‘The Big Issue’. He was reacting to contradictory statements made by President Mahama regarding filling Ghanaians’ pockets with money.

Mr Mahama, in a recent interview with Volta Star Radio while on his Accounting To the People tour in the Volta Region, told his critics, who say they cannot feel the positive effect of the growing economy “in their pockets” that he, as the leader of the nation, cannot personally go round the length and breadth of the country putting money into people’s pockets, adding that such critics can fill their pockets with money by taking advantage of the opportunities that abound in the economy.

“…The thing is, if you say ‘feeling it in your pocket’, it doesn’t mean that the president is going to come from place to place and count money and give it to everybody to put it in his pocket. The economy will provide the opportunities, but it’s for the people to take advantage of it,” he indicated in an interview on Volta Star Radio in the Volta Region on Thursday April 21, 2016.

But President Mahama had earlier said in an interview at the inauguration of a Community Day Senior High School at Kwaobaah Nyanoa in the Eastern Region on Thursday, February 4, 2016 that: “We have spent these last four years investing in bringing the social infrastructure back to scratch and when I win the second term, then we will start putting money in your pocket. And I wish to pledge that we will continue working in the interest of the people of Ghana.”

To Mr Casely-Hayford, such contradictions could make the president vulnerable to public attacks.