She made these remarks over the weekend at the 3rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) organised by the Gambia Centre for Victims of Human Rights Violations.
She noted that “CSOs have different mandates, but we are all here to engage in advocacy and offer alternative policies for government, private sector, and other institutions. We deliver services to the poor, marginalised and vulnerable.”
“We work with government, complement and monitor their policies and actions and try to hold government accountable. Now if we are holding government accountable, we ourselves should be examples of accountability by achieving our goals and tasks which we can only achieve when we limit distractions, noise and outside pressure,” she advised.
She said that one of CSOs mandate is to hold general assembly be it annually, biannually or whatever chosen time in accordance with their organisation’s constitutions, to elect its leaders in a democratic and transparent manner.
She pointed out that “we can’t be seen to be overstaying our mandated time and yet we still want to go out there and monitor elections to determine if the state conducted free and fair elections while in our own corners we do not implement what we are demanding for others.”
“As long as Civil Society is out there holding stakeholders to follow rules, so are we in our organisations?” she declared. She noted that there are rules and regulations in place to check corruption in their organisations and to address it as the rules call for.
“Here too, we can’t be out there stamping out corruption while we are not holding so in our own quarters,” she pointed out. She added that as civil society, they should hold regular elections and have checks in place to avoid any foul play, likewise have instruments in place to check their dealings.
