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.