The
Gambia country representative of Article 19, a human rights organisation which
advocates for a world where all people everywhere can freely express themselves
and actively engage in public life without fear of discrimination has called on
the country’s Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to be more active in their
service and not wait to react when incidents happen.
Amprofi
Agyemang was speaking during a consultative forum for CSOs in Banjul, Kanifing
and Brikama. The consultative forum was
organised by Article 19 (West Africa) with support from National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) under its “Strengthening Civic Voice and Improving Grassroots
Democratic Participation in The Gambia’’ initiative. The forum discussed issues
relating to access to information, governance, accountability and citizen
engagement for the newly elected Municipal officials with the view to
strengthening civic space, voices and engagement at local government level.
He
said he did not see any strategic agenda setting mechanism for Gambian CSOs,
saying they have become quite reactive to issues and only make statements when
incidents occur.
“There
is a long period of quietness until something happens and then we react. You
should be able to set the agenda by showing government and local government how
bad the roads are,” Mr. Agyemang said.
He
reminded CSOs that they should make best use of social media and focus on issues
that affects the safety of children on health and education among other issues
of national development.
According
to him, most of the time politicians and people running for offices would
present their manifestos to citizens without no clear research as to what they
really need or without having ideas that fit what is really on the ground.
This, he said, results to politicians abandoning the promises as per their
manifestos just few months into office and follow a completely different line.
The
Gambia conducted local government elections few months ago, which provided
opportunity for newly elected Mayors to implement their manifestos. As a
complement to the provisions on representativeness in terms of structure in the
Local Government Act, there remains room for additional recommendations on how
citizens can further seek information, engage with the local government process
to achieve manifesto promises and to promote initiatives that could foster open
government and public participation.
However,
the forum made some resolutions and recommendations that should be taken by
councils after their 100 days in office, especially on good governance,
accountability and access to information. It also highlighted some of the
campaign promises made by mayors and chairpersons during the campaign and their
achievements thus far.