Editor-in-chief of The Enquirer newspaper, Raymond Archer,
last Friday, descended heavily on Mr Jake Obestebi-Lamptey, the
Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), for shooting off is
mouth recklessly when the 2012 General Elections were in the throes
of widespread technology failure that threatened the acceptability
of the poll’s results.
For writing on Friday evening to threaten that if the ballots
that had been cast at polling stations where the malfunction of
verification machines in the day had necessitated voting extension
the next day were not secured properly, the NPP would annul the
results, Mr Archer called Jake, a semi-literate.
“This is what happens when you have semi-literate people in
leadership positions,” Mr Archer told radio Gold’s Alhassan
Suhiyini last Friday.
The chief scribe of the Enquirer, who had come out of a
hiatus from public commentary, then reiterated the simple
obviousness that it is the Electoral Commission, which has the
power to declare and annul
results.
Following the Electoral Commission’s extension of voting to
the next day after the widespread breakdown of verification
machines in the first round of voting of the General Elections last
Friday, Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey floated a confrontational threat
through the media.
“We further call upon members of the security services to
discharge their duties with integrity, in order to preserve a legal
and legitimate election according to the count, record, seal
process. If the count, record, seal process is not followed, we may
seek to annul the result of the votes already cast, and to hold
fresh elections,” Jake had written in a release.
But Raymond Archer dismissed the NPP Chairman’s brinkmanship
as an uncouth siren that announces his intent to repeat a
criminality that was overlooked by former President Kufuor’s
regime.
“Let me tell Jake, this is not the time when they held
elections and he went to declare them (NPP) victorious and
everything was allowed to go… I don’t think that will happen now”,
Mr Archer warned.
His re-collection warning was in respect of the 2004 General
Elections, where this same Jake Otanka Obestsebi-Lamptey, who is
notorious for trying to incite Akans to mayhem in the run-up to the
2012 elections, constituted himself into the Electoral Commission
and announced John Kufuor, his candidate, as winner.
The Editor-in-Chief of The Enquirer warned Jake not to make
the mistake of attempting a repetition of the 2008 criminality,
since this could land him trouble.
“He is playing on the wrong side…. He wants to annul results,
in what capacity?” Mr Archer also dismissed Jake as a shameless
political party leader who has allowed his conscience to go AWOL in
a situation where he should be kicking himself.
He recalled that when the issue of verification came up and
some well meaning Ghanaians raised concerns, the same Jake, who was
threatening vandalism over the failure of the verification
machines, was the same person who led a glee-club of NPP
aficionados to clamour an insistence on verification.
The malfunctioning of the verification machines on Election
Day vindicated the position of level-headed Ghanaians, including Dr
Clement Apaak, of the Forum for Governance and Justice (FGJ), who
had said verification could be cumbersome.
