No Love Lost

Pastor Claude leading a prayer at the first
Single Parents Network public consultation.

Boy am I fed up.

Just had a long and unfruitful meeting.

Wanted to make some changes to the Single Parents' Committee.

As I'm leaving, I'm handing over the position of Treasurer to D.

Committee are fine with that.

The big problem then comes with Pastor Claude.

Pastor Claude was originally asked to step in as temporary President because MINALOC insisted that the head of a local NGO had to be Rwandan. We trusted him, we thought he would have our best interests at heart.

Sadly, no. MINALOC reversed their decision and now allow anyone to be the head of a local NGO, as demonstrated by the Meg Foundation (AKA Kinamba Project), which has a Brit as its President.

So, we - the Committee - felt it was time to make Rose the head of the Network, as she should have been from the very beginning.

Now, we are grateful to Pastor Claude. He has been very helpful. Without him it probably would have taken a lot longer to get our paperwork done.

However, the Network is an NGO for single parents. 98% of our members are single mothers.

Pastor Claude is neither a single parent nor a woman.

He is, however, absolutely adamant that he will cling to the presidency - unless we pay him!!!

So much for a 'man of God'!

Ermn, honour, decency, scruples - any of these words mean anything Pastor Claude? Corrupt is what it is.

But we stood firm. We said 'No, we will not pay you not to be President. This is a matter of public good, the good of our members. We appreciate everything you have done, really we do, but you cannot represent single parents or women, thus time has come for change.'

'Very well,' says Pastor Claude. 'I am going to go to the Revenue Authority and accuse you all of stealing funds from the organisation.' - !!!

I laughed, it sounded so absurd.

What a nasty little man.

So, that's the state of play. We wanted it to be a peaceful handshake and hand over, we even asked him to remain as a Signatory on the account as a gesture of good will. But, no.

Now we are reduced to calling an emergency meeting of the Committee to vote him out on a quorum.

Then we instate Rose as President, Peter (single father of five) as Vice-President, and D as Treasurer.

But what a dishonourable way to behave. He couldn't answer a single question about what being President meant to him, what he thought his role was, or how he was helping our members. All he saw was the title 'President, President, President' and tried to tell us that we had agreed to instate him for ten years!! Errr, no, we didn't. The Statute only says a term of five years - and we can vote you out whenever we chose with a majority of two-thirds.

So ~nyer~.

Just a question of how much stamping of feet and how much shouting he's going to do before he goes away.

Thankfully, the Committee are standing firm and our accounts are in order. So he can go jump.