Influence Peddling In NDC: Bature, Raymond Archer ride high

Hitherto, politicians and businessmen were the people that could peddle influence to catch the eye of the President or the powers that be.

But in Ghana these days, journalist sympathetic to the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) are peddling dirty influence in other to catch the eye of President Mahama, his wife or some ministers.

Two of such journalists are Alhaji Bature and Raymond Archer, Editors-In –Chief of the Al Hajj and The Enquirer newspapers respectively.

The target of the two journalists is no other person than Mr. Seth Tekper, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning and President Mahama himself.

It was Alhaji Bature who, not long ago, launched a blistering attack on the Finance Minister for some strange reasons after the then Minister of Information, Mr. Mahama Ayariga, had claimed on Joy FM that the finance minister was extremely truthful with how the economy was doing.

Alhaji Bature since then has countlessly attacked the minister with some misleading and simply weird economic analysis.

Last week, Raymond Archer, who is struggling to be reorganized in the scheme of affairs in the Mahama administration, wrote in his <.em>Enquirer that has been reduced to a mouthpiece of Kofi Wayo, Harry Zarkour and a certain Henry Mainly-Spain, who wants to lead the Greater Accra NDC, that Mr. Terkper was behaving as the President while the President was doing things like the Finance Minister.

Raymond Archer went further to talk about how the Chief of Staff and persons around the President should go about things.

Archer in that piece claimed that he was a system analyst and made lots of suggestions as to how things should be run at the Presidency.

It is instructive to note that Raymond Archer had claimed once on Radio Gold that he was advising the late Professor John Atta Mills on certain issues when he was the President.

Days after his article in The Enquirer, Alhaji Bature gave themselves up as to why they are constantly attacking Mr. Terkper by lifting Raymond Archer’s article and placing it at the front page of his Al-Hajj newspaper.

Interestingly, Alhaji Bature showered lots of praises on Raymond Archer for pursuing his influence peddling agenda and went further to give a bite to the article and as usual attacked the President and the Finance Minister.

Alhaji Bature has little influence among some ministers and persons closer to the President, but Raymond Archer, who now claims to be a businessman, is struggling to catch the eye of the President.

The young braggart, who creams government printing contract but goes round complaining to almost all government officials, from his article, made the world to believe that he could manage the Presidency more than the Chief of Staff and any other person in the country.

It is widely suspected that Raymond Archer engaged the services of Alhaji Bature when he realized that his Enquirer is not making the needed impact as far as his influence peddling agenda was concerned.

Sincerely, the two are just wrong because the President and the Finance Minister have always been truthful with the state of the economy.

If Alhaji Bature and Raymond Archer feel that Mr. Terkper is blocking some of their people from doing their own thing at the Ministry of Finance, then they should think again.

Anybody with the NDC at heart and not interested in what they would get from the party should rally behind the Finance Minister and the President to turn things round instead of talking as if they are the repository of knowledge as far as governance is concerned.