The Majority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has confessed to facing a challenging situation when he couldn’t openly endorse the presidential bid of his close friend, Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong.
Agyapong’s aspirations to lead the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) ultimately fell short, with the coveted position going to Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
Afenyo-Markin in an interview on the Point of View on Citi TV on Monday, February 27, acknowledged receiving financial support from Agyapong in the past to revitalize his business, creating a layer of personal debt.
However, he found himself unable to publicly back his friend’s presidential ambitions due to prior commitments made to Dr. Bawumia.
He explained that abandoning Dr. Bawumia would have been a significant source of disappointment.
“It was a very difficult moment for me, you see, Ken [Agyapong] and I were all supporting Bawumia. Both of us were Bawumia and Ken out of the blue, he informed me that Alex, I want to contest, I said okay but as it is, I’m a Freemason and a Catholic.
“I know how to respect friendship, yeah, and if you have given your word to a brother [Bawumia], you have to keep it. So I told him that our friendship would remain. But it will be difficult for me to be seen to be out there doing this or that. However, I would want to play the role of resolving issues and being there. He understood where I was coming from.
He emphasized, “This is a bosom friend, at the time that I was going through a crisis in parliament, positions had been shared and nobody considered Afenyo-Markin, he called me at midnight into his house, and we talked business. He said Alex I want to give you capital to revive your business. He gave me capital to revive my business, and I turned round to betray him. No, I can’t do that, alright? Neither can I support him too, openly no, I couldn’t have. My situation made it difficult for me to openly support him. He put us in a very difficult situation.”
He expressed his willingness to have positioned himself differently had he known Ken Agyapong would run for president.
“If I had known that my bosom friend was going to be a presidential aspirant. I would have positioned myself. He has spoken on TV and radio in support of Bawumia.”
The MP for Assin Central recently expressed his feelings of betrayal and the insults he suffered from colleagues he had assisted.
