The ruling National Democratic Congress is initiating investigations into allegations of bribery and vote buying during the election of constituency and national executive officers. As a first step, a committee would be travelling around the country to gather evidence. This is one of the decisions taken at the first meeting of the party’s newly-constituted national executive. One of the party’s vice chairpersons, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, says the investigations will help efforts to unify the party. “There is definitely the need to investigate the irregularities that took place. There are a lot of people who are pretty angry about certain things that went on. There are some who didn’t get the chance to choose those they wanted as their executives,” Nana Konadu said. “In some places people were forced to accept executives who were not even from their areas.” The former First Lady’s comments come amidst intense pressure on the national executive committee of the party to look into the allegations of bribery at the Sunyani election. A leading member of the party Ras Mubarak, who contested the post of National Youth Organiser, alleged that some contestants distributed mobile phones to win the support of delegates. Nana Konadu is one of six vice national chairpersons elected at the Tamale congress of the party which was widely described as largely incident-free. Most of the party’s big wigs including former President Jerry John Rawlings attended the congress. But for the Sunyani incident the party would have succeeded in organising two successive congresses with no incident. Source: Myjoyonline.com/Ghana