Raymond Archer!.... The Face Of A Lying Coward!

Since Monday, when we published that he had claimed on a radio program that former President Rawlings and his wife had been paid five million dollars by the Atta Mills administration to complete their cocoa factory, Mr. Raymond Archer, the Editor in Chief of the Enquirer newspaper, has been going all out to accuse this newspaper and its editor, Mr. Kenneth Kuranchie, of peddling falsehood.

Mr. Archer has denied flat out ever saying that the Rawlingses had been given five million dollars by the Atta Mills administration!

He insists in a rejoinder he sent to Ghanaweb, and we quote, “I admit that I was on Alhaji and Alhaji news review program on Radio Gold last Saturday. Everything I said was recorded and has been played back in the wake of the controversy started by the publication. The numerous live of the program never heard me mention that Jerry John Rawlings or his Wife had been given $5 million by the Mills government. There was only one person who heard me say this: Mr. Ken Kuranchie.

LET ME STATE EMPHATICALLY THAT I DID NOT MAKE THOSE STATEMENTS ATTRIBUTED TO ME BY THE SEARCHLIGHT NEWSPAPER. THE SAID STORY IS FALSE!" (The grammatical mistakes and omissions here are entirely Mr. Archer’s own.-Editor)

Well, we at the Daily Searchlight can state without equivocation that Mr. Archer is a liar, that he lied unashamedly to the readers of Ghanaweb and all the media houses he has been speaking to, and that he did say that the Rawlingses has been paid upward of five million dollars!

The mistake of Mr. Archer, which he would like all of us to accept, is that just because he did not mention the Rawlingses by name, the rest of have no business concluding for him, when his entire descriptive narration can only fit the Rawlingses!

Mr. Archer said on the program Alhaji and Alhaji and we quote directly, “I have heard people spearhead this thing about the President is slow. You know Suhini I have heard people from the North fight over work, people fight over employment and those people from the North, the youth, the grassroots are supported by very KEY PEOPLE within the NDC and they all say the President is slow.

“You know in less than six (6) months of the NDC in power, there was a particular project, A COCOA PROCESSING PROJECT which the Kufuor administration refused to pay certain amount of money…I thought for several years the Enquirer kept talking about the fact that that kind of destructive politicking was not the best.

“Just less than eight (8) months or I think is even less than six (6) months into the NDC in power they paid that money CLOSE TO ABOUT $5MILLION TO THOSE WHO WERE THE PROMOTERS OF THAT PROJECT. They didn’t think it was too slow, they didn’t think that ooooh this one was too quick but they took the money!

“They didn’t say oh because we have grassroots supporters and you have SADA in the North and the Northern people might need jobs, put the $5 million in the SADA and will give thousands and thousands of jobs so that us for us since we are all part of the system we will take it later. You know they didn’t do that!” End of quote.

From the above, it is all too clear that Mr. Archer said that upward of five million dollars had been given to the promoters of a cocoa processing factory who are KEY PEOPLE in the NDC government.

Mr. Archer seems to think that just because he did not mention the Rawlingses by name we cannot conclude as to the people he is referring to. Well, he is welcome to that position, but he should tell us; who are the KEY PEOPLE in the NDC who have said that President Atta Mills is slow, and who are the PROMOTERS of a cocoa factory that had problems with the Kufuor administration about which the Enquirer and other newspapers did a slew of publications in the past? The answer is only one, the Calf Cocoa Factory which is owned by the 31st December Women’s Movement, which is run by Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, the wife of former President Jerry John Rawlings!

In his rejoinder, Mr. Archer insisted that he did not mention the Calf Cocoa Factory. Well, he did not, but unlike the fabricated story about the rains in his rejoinder, we are sure that he was not fictionalizing about the details of the cocoa factory whose promoters were paid five million dollars by the NDC of John Mills. If he was not fictionalizing, then that factory has only one set of owners! Or will Mr. Archer admit that he was lying about the money?

For years, Mr. Archer has been throwing his weight about as a hard charging news reporter and commentator. He is a ‘brave’ man; we all know that, so now he should mention the name of the promoters of the factory he was talking about, the people who say that Atta Mills is slow!

Interestingly, Mr. Archer says in his rejoinder that he used his resources to support the Daily Searchlight. It is sad how very petty some people can get, because we at the Daily Searchlight do not know what Mr. Archer is talking about. We would be glad if he would enlighten us as to how, exactly, he has ever supported the Daily Searchlight, which was in circulation when Mr. Archer was still a snot-nosed cub reporter on the Chronicle newspaper!

To conclude, Mr. Archer has a few words about big foot journalism. Again, he should know, because he fabricated the KICKBACK SCANDAL out of a simple interview granted him by an old man in confidence, who had no idea he had allowed a vicious snake into his house! What a coward!