Casely-Hayford renders unconditional apology to Parliament

• Posted on July 14, 2017July 14, 2017
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Social commentator, Sydney Casely-Hayford has rendered an unconditional apology to Parliament for comments he made against the house.

Mr Casely-Hayford is said to have been in contempt of Parliament by saying that “Members of Parliament (MPs) only make stupid decisions and pass stupid laws.”

His comment which did not sit well with some of the MPs was brought to the attention of the First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei-Owusu on Thursday by the MP for Kumbungu, Ras Mubarak.

Mr Osei-Owusu thus requested the House to invite Mr Casely-Hayford to answer contempt charges.

But speaking on Citi FM Thursday evening, Mr Casely-Hayford said his comments were “indeed over the top”.

“I do apologize for that. I used some language which I supposed I should not have used. I unreservedly apologize because in matured conversation, when you say something that you offend somebody and you are prompted, the least you can do is to say I’m sorry, it wasn’t meant to be offensive, this is where I was going and if it came out the wrong way then I do apologize sincerely, I have no reservation doing that,” he added.

A remorseful Casely-Hayford said his comments were not to attack Parliament but he was instead advocating for a decentralized law making house.

“I was giving a talk on the best government practices for development in Africa. We were discussing the issue and I suggested that what we could do was to dissolve the single parliament arrangement that we have and instead have ten regional parliaments where each parliament will perfectly take care of their own areas. So this is what the conversion went. I’m saying so, I deed went over the top, I do apologise for that. I used some language which I supposed I should not have used. But it was a very interesting engaging conversion and certain words came out that did not need to come out during the time. But it was not about this Parliament but it was about the processes that we go through in order to arrive at development in Africa.”

“I think that the article that came out was a little misconstrued in the way it was presented so it made it look like I was insulting parliament. There is no reason why I will call for a dissolution of Parliament and suggest that we have ten,” he explained.