The Board of the Copyright Society of Botswana (COSBOTS) has during on Monday informed journalists that they had rescheduled their Annual General Meeting (AGM). The meeting which was to take place on July 22 at Paddock Conference Centre will now be held on August 19, 2017, the Board told a press conference.
The elections at the AGM will fill up the four positions that have become vacant on the Board.
Corporate Communications Manager at COSBOTS Seeletso Lekgaba said the main reason for postponing the meeting was to allow the organisation time to deliver a professional AGM.
“The Board has the responsibility to ensure that it delivers a properly structured and professional AGM. This means conducting credible, transparent and fair elections for the vacancies that are available on the Board,” said Lekgaba.
Lekgaba said to avoid having a sub-standard electoral process the Board invited Botswana Council of Non-Governmental Organisation (BOCONGO) to handle the electoral process.
“Unfortunately BOCONGO has advised the Board that in order to deliver on their mandate they need more time. They insisted that there is no way they could have been ready by July 22. Because our main focus as COSBOTS is the best electoral process, we have no choice but to comply lest we compromise the quality of the process,” said Lekgaba.
Acting Board Chairperson of COSBOTS Prince Monna said the rescheduling was necessary because to avoid the unprocedural activities that have led them to the decision. “We had to go back to the drawing board to rectify some of the issues that we could see were going to compromise our electoral process. We need to elect a Board that is credible enough to serve the members of COSBOTS.
BOCONGO is coming in to ensure that controls are tightened for the benefit of transparent and fair elections which COSBOTS has failed to achieve in the past,” he said. In addition Monna said the Board had received a number of proxy forms which they have had to invalidate due to certain irregularities and they need to ensure that such is avoided going forward.
Monna said the relationship that his Board had with its membership required sensitive navigation. “That being the case if the Board was the one that was going to conduct the elections it would raise an eyebrow. Monna praised BOCONGO for the successful electoral processes that they have held so far. “Unlike BOCONGO, COSBOTS has always failed in that department. We couldn’t have found a better organisation for the job considering that its organisational characteristics are almost similar to ours,” he pointed out. He said his Board will therefore learn and set precedence for future elections based solely on BOCONGO’s exceptional track record. Monna said his Board is therefore looking forward to learning what it means to conduct a membership driven electoral process which is functional.
