Renowned Economist, Kwame Pianim, has responded to a viral statement on Facebook, a social media platform, which has his picture attached and purporting that he (Kwame Pianim) is praising the government.
He told this paper in a telephone interview yesterday, that “I don’t know the gentlemen who wrote that statement. I have never talked to him in my life. And he obviously doesn’t know Kwadjo Mpianim. People confuse Kwame Pianim and Kwadwo Mpiani and it(statement) is attributed to one Mpiani.”
But, Mr Pianim added, “He put the picture of myself and President Mahama taken in July, when I went to visit the president with the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and the Teachers’ Fund.”
According to Mr Pianim, the language used in the viral statement is certainly not his language and that when he visited the president in July, he said President Mahama had a historic opportunity to turn things around for Ghana because he is the only one out of the 35million Ghanaians who has been an Assembly man, an MP, a deputy minister, a minster, a vice president and president and has come back, “and so he knows all our tricks.”
Dismissing the statement entirely, the man who established the Teachers’ Fund said to take a picture in July and say the government has been in office for eight months, by layman’s calculation, cannot be eight months.
Mr. Kwame Pianim asserted that “I don’t know the guy. I don’t know where he got his story from. The words he is using none of them are mine. The statements I made when he went to visit the president are there, the recording is there. It has nothing to do with NPP. I keep telling the NPP, get your acts together because we need the democratic depensation. The young people are losing confidence in democracy, because they see Toare and they are enthused. But I am saying that we need democracy and I even said we need to cooperate-NPP and NDC, so that democracy will remain.”
The economist’s rebuttal comes on the back of a statement on social media attributed to one Mr Mpianim which read: “If someone had told me eight years ago that Ghana could be governed this effectively-with just 60 ministers, not a single scandal in eight months, and an economy managed so productively and prudently without a superfluous economic management team and digital head-I would never have believed it. This is yet another clear reason why the NPP is destined to remain in opposition for the next twelve years.”
The statement however was accompanied by a picture Mr Kwame Pianim and President John Dramani Mahama which, Mr Pianim say was taken in July when he went with the GNAT to visit the President at the Jubilee House.
