The Battle Is Raging. Critical News, 17th April 2016

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

I am struggling with the inefficiency and rudeness in the public and private sectors. It is not that the service is poor, it is more that neither persons working for companies in the private sector nor the public sector care too much about you when they respond to questions over the phone. Warranted every once in a while you will get someone who thinks clearly and sensibly and is willing to bend over backwards to keep a customer satisfied.

I was at a very popular hotel over the weekend. Stressed out and very irritated by poor refereeing in the Leceister City v West Ham match, I settled into a quick meal to take off my accumulated stress. It took a while for the food to show up and I was pretty irritated and hungry by the time it hit my table.

My first forkful of chicken tasted off, slightly spoilt and I thought well what to do? Enough time spent waiting, I pushed all the pieces of chicken to one side and ate what I could of the rest of the meal. I am choosing to keep the name of the hotel out of it, it is somewhere I spend a bit of time and the end result was very good, when the chef came out and apologied and made amends with a complimentary bowl of fruit.

Dompe Chronicles. Critical News, 10th April 2016

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

My two dogs are fighting. They are direct siblings from the same stock, not much difference between the two and are well matched in size, speed, performance and guile. The fighting has been going for some weeks now and it has intensified as they grow bigger and bolder, jockeying for which will become the alpha male. Nothing I do and no matter what punishment, they will find a place and something to fight over.

I expected this would happen, but my approach was to rear them together as playmates, from the same litter and eliminate any animosity because they would hunt together, bark together and seek out trespassers together.

I am not so naïve to think they will never fight over something and of course the inevitable mating season as they mature is bound to create havoc, but for a short while. That day has not even come yet.

So the fighting started over some pieces of chicken bones. The usually quiet one, fed up with being bullied, rallied against the other only to find that he had been retreating for no good reason. He could match the slightly bigger in strength and speed and even won the first fight.

Ghana’s Most Corrupt. Critical News, 13th March 2016

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

When I was a much younger person, with strong bow legs, a full afro head of hair, twinkling eyes and a cheeky smile to boot (I am looking at one of my old pictures so I don’t paint a rosier picture) my Independence Day celebration was caught up with marching for the Osu Home School, proud to be leading the flag in the scorching sun and cooling off afterwards at home with family to be raged by stories of the struggle, either from my parents or my grandfather, depending on what assignment he had.

The night celebration was the show. A full Military tattoo with two competing units of the military assembling and disassembling a cannon from one end of the national stadium to the other and the winning cannon signaling success of the team that performed faster and more efficiently. I enjoyed those days. They were coordinated and interesting and we had the best seats in the stands, granddaddy being a member of cabinet and all, and most importantly, we spent the whole day really understanding what the struggle meant and why we decorated some members of the army and renewed our pledges to stay true to the cause.

So this year we again did the same. Slightly differently, but same nonetheless. We celebrated mediocrity and clapped away our infrastructure deficiencies.

Making The Case For An Obinim Presidency. Critical News, 7th March 2016

 

Sydney Casely-Hayford and Anonymous.  Sydney@bizghana.com

I didn’t write this piece, but not everything I write is as good as this. Needing to share.

I am impressed that we have so many like-minded persons, prepared to commit their thoughts to paper and say things as they see it. I am trying very hard not to take too much credit for the various “good governance” CSO’s we have spawned along the way and from OccupyGhana, I say the more of such writers we have the more change we will see in Ghana.

Here we go!

The Jokers Gallery. Critical News, 28th February 2016

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

The State of the Nation dominated our lives in the week. But the after party is yet to come as the NPP threatens to release their true state of the nation on Monday.

I quite liked the idea of presenting a sample of regular folk as testimony of what Government thought it had achieved. Many disagree with me, and someone actually sent a text into our Saturday program on Citifm’s The Big Issue to congratulate me for “seeing the light at last”.

All in good fun and progressive debate in the attempt to be fair and call it as you see it.

But I have a big beef with what I saw as very childish behavior by the President and the equally infantile posturing of both sides of the House, waving flags and showing placards as if in some playschool ground, listening to a propaganda speech from the school prefect. And the President has to bear the brunt of my sharp tongue when I say his attitude when it comes to this particular event is way below acceptable and he must accept responsibility for egging our child-like Parliament on as if their only job in the chamber is to wait for certain pre-selected phrases to pull out a provocative card.

I want a more serious parliament, with more emphasis on critical change mechanisms and opportunities for the people of this country.

As I write today, I am not clear what the state of this nation reads like.

But I particularly want to share this piece sent to me by an unflinching Occupier, Mr. JB Aidoo who sent me this article as he also looked at claims by the President on the road infrastructure in the country.

Dumsor No Crossing Over. Critical News, 27th December 2015

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

I have written fifty-one articles this year, missed one sometime in November, I think and marred a perfect record since 2013. I started this column halfway in 2012 and after the Daily Guide decided to make it a weekly page in 2013, I have been going week after week without fail. I didn’t start it as such, but it kind of got into that rhythm and hasn’t swerved since.

And the only reason I keep going is because I have close to 15,000 readers worldwide on my Blog and I get so much encouragement, I hardly pause to think of it is a thankless job. Hindsight, I should have been a writer but life took me down a different corridor and I ended up an accountant.

So to all my readers out there and to all of you who encourage me daily, I say a big thank you, may you cross over gently, not like Dr. Kwbena Donkor, who must shed his “dumsor” load and make it safely across if he can.

I am asking Pastor Otabil a favor that if he sees the Minister in his Church this 31^st night, could you please make sure he is not carrying any dumsor. His final task this year is to leave the dreaded load behind or shed his behind and close his office door gently. There will no light so he need not turn the lights out.

But on the other side, I have had seven continuous days of electricity, I am not sure if it is the Xmas break or if we are on the way to recovery. If we are finally getting some answers, Ghanaians should pat themselves on the back, it will be one of the other times we have “forced“ implementation out of the politicians, (reluctantly?) and we should say “big up “ to the people.

Brand In The Gutter. Critical News, 22nd November 2015

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

How are we going to get from here to somewhere? Just when you think things cannot get any worse, our Government manages to reach a new low, pulling our value down with such careless abandon, it can’t be proper.

This week was the week for the NDC primaries. Postponed for two weeks for their own reasons, it seemed the country was just tolerating any announcements and excuses we were offered. But the day came, and it did not disappoint.

I have to state that some persons in this country, true patriots and dedicated citizens laid down their lives to achieve a certain standard they felt was adequate for purpose. Even as a small precocious country in Sub-Sahara Africa with very little to show except for plenty gold and many pods of cocoa, we grew an image in prickly speeches and stand-offs against colonial empires in order to demand we manage our own affairs, given half a chance.

Well, we have not managed too well, but we seemed to be coming along with peaceful transitions in democracy and even with a failing national sport, we still commanded a better than worst nation tag.

But now? All this week, the NDC primaries have fed us a diet of ballot box snatching, disappearing names in registers, small boys fighting big veterans, trading accusations and chanting war songs, candidate names not seen at certain polling stations, a microcosm of the bigger general election to come later next November.

And while we are on the subject, how long should it take the EC to read the recommendations her office organized and tell us whether we are on the way to do the sensible thing and compile a new register? Since she received the report, “we are still studying it?” These voting problems? Is it the EC or the NDC who failed? Or did they do it together as always?

Where The Better At? Critical News, 1st November 2015

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

And last week came and went oooo, and now we are in November with only one year left to the elections but more importantly, we have only 61 days to the end of “Dumsor”.

As promised to us in the State of the Nation address by His Eminent and Most Venerable Excellency President John Dramani Mahama, once Communications Minister of Ghana and former Member of Parliament for Bole Bamboi in the Northern Region which holds seventy-five constituencies and a population at last Census count in 2010 of 61,593 of who 56% are registered to vote.

His Most Uncreative and Emphatically Under-performing self-ariser to the throne of President trumpeted his voice and clearly told all of us he will “fix” it.

However, his accolades say he never gave a date. True, he didn’t. So he wants to take forever?

We have it on record that dumsor is over at the end of this year. We have sixty-one days left, today inclusive.

In paragraph 96 of the Mid-term review given by Seth Terkper, Chief Bishop of the Eminent Monarch of Ghana on 21st July 2015 he made all this very clear. The master plan for the Better Ghana had been considered and laid out for this sector.

And Superman Left. Critical News, 25th October 2015

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

We have reached a tipping point on the voter’s register. The Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA) have filed action against the police for the brutal beating and maiming of their marchers in a peaceful demonstration last month.

Not knowing what to do with the fall out from the march, the police had themselves initiated an accusation of unruly behaviour and deviation from the route as determined between them and the marchers.

The fact that the law is quite clear, in my opinion that you don’t need police permission in this country to go on a peaceful march, we will track this case and see how it rolls out. One thing the police should be clear about, this is not going to end with the LMVCA withdrawing their case. It will go to the wire, and of course with Justice Ajet Nasam on the road, there is enough hope that the system will hold its seams.

The honorable Justice has “escaped” from society for a few days, maybe months, we are yet to determine, but hopefully, others will now take their roles a lot more seriously and apply more diligence to the process of justice. I wish for the day when all the adjournments and delays will end and we will have faster justice.

I can’t believe we are still hearing the Abuga Pele and Assibit case after so many months and even as I was corrected by Fred Agbanyo on radio yesterday that Abuga has not been cleared in Chiana Paga to run for Parliament for the NDC, I take it with a pinch of salt, because I read it myself and it was very clear that a possible criminal had been selected to go to Parliament on behalf of the NDC party.

Political Crass. Critical News, 6th September 2015

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

Once you substitute the “L” with an “R” you turn the word on its head. But ahead of the conversation about whether my peeps in the Ashanti Region will ever be able to restore value to their alphabet challenge, let’s accept how easily you can be misquoted for thinking about a peculiar trait or habit in a different light.

I had the distinct honor and duty to sit on the same panel with two gentlemen from both sides of the political divide. KT Hammond and Kojo Adu Asare.

You know I have a particular distaste for giving people accolades they have not earned. A beauty queen is selected for her beauty. A first class degree is given to those who show excellence in academia and a lawyer earns the title “learned” out of respect for making his mark at the Bar. A scholar is not called that for nothing.

I am prejudiced against Ghana’s politicians. I have asked them all and separately to tell us what they have achieved for us as political groups, mandated to run the affairs of this country and am still waiting for answers. When I look at how Singapore, Malaysia, India, China and Brazil have created so much pride, I ask our servants in the House, how far with all their strategies and deliberations?

Should I still be waiting for ROPAA to be initiated, despite the fact that it is law? Should I still be hanging on for Parliament to remove the taxes such as TOR levies and others to make fuel more affordable? Am I still waiting for the Freedom of Information Bill to become law and for the Private Members bill to be tabled and voted, so some persons other than handpicked cabinet ministers can initiate law?

Seth Terkper came to hint at bad times to come. He was on radio to tell us how the world economy is going to depress and how our three key sources of foreign income are drying up because of stifling international prices.