News Analysis By Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City
THE events of the last two weeks are pointing to the direction that all are not well in the otherwise highly vibrant regional economic bloc that groups together five Eastern African nations.
The skipping of the important East African Community {EAC} by Tanzania in the last two weeks has sparked off speculations and fears about its commitments to the regional economic bloc.
Reports emerging from the Burundian capital, Bujumbura are painting a gloomy future of the EAC, which groups together Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi with potentiality and prospects of the newest African nation of Southern Sudan joining the EAC quite soon,
Tanzania’s absence forced the alteration of an important report prepared earlier by the Council of Ministers before its adoption by the Heads of State summit.
Though Dar’s representatives in the technical discussions and Council of Ministers meetings, it failed to attend the signing of a report fast-tracking the regional political federation that was presented to the Heads of State.
President Yoweri Museven of Uganda missed for the first time this major political forum of this magnitude, while President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, the next door has missed the three consecutive meetings of the EAC and all these are sending out the signals of discontent within the bloc.
The first EAC collapsed in 1971 following the bloody military coup staged by Idi Amin Dada against the civilian government headed by Dr.Apollo Milton Obote. This followed sharp ideological differences between Kenya’s founding President the late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and President Julius Kambarage Nyerere and also the insistence by the Tanzanian leader that he could not sit on the same table with unelected ruler of Uganda.
The collapse was later followed by the daunting task f sub-division of the failed community’s assets which were shared by the three countries running into billion of dollars. The assets, included key government institutions such as the defunct East African Railways and Harbors, the East African Posts and Telecommunications, East African Airways just to mention a few leading to its thousands of workers being declared redundant/
Tanzania representatives were further conspicuously absent from the high profile seminar for Members of Parliaments from the five national assemblies and East African Legislative Assembly {EALA} that was attended by at least eight Speakers of parliament from the region and other regional blocs.
Zanzibar House of Representative Speaker Pandu Amein Kificho who had been invited as the Isles National Assembly representative arrived late for the function and stated his case by saying that the process of integration should be democratic and anchored in the quality of member states for political federation to succeed.
Tanzania also sent its Vice President Mohamed Mohamed Ghalib Bilal who represented President Jakaya Kikwete at the Heads of State Summit where President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, which is the next door was also absent. Rwanda sent its Prime Minister Pierre Damien Huburumurenyi the summit which witnessed the taking over of the EAC chair by President Mwai Kibaki o Kenya from President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi.
This was the first major international held in Burundi a country which I still struggling from persistent internal ethnic armed conflict.
During the conference Tanzania flatly rejec6tedthe experts report on” concerns, fears and challenges” facing the East African Community political federation, especially the inclusion of land, transformation of the EAC secretariat into a Commission with more biting teeth and a protocol on co-operation in security and defense matters.
Information emerging from impeccable sources have it that reluctance and unwillingness of Tanzania to be dragged into what it termed as “unnecessary wars perhaps was the main reason for Dar’s initially declined to sign a document recommending for the establishment of a joint regional defense protocol.
The same source further disclosed that Tanzania is worried by the history some of the East African Community member states have of being embroiled in conventional wars, even sometimes o the basis of their leaders’ personal differences.
It says that the feeling among Tanzanians was revealed by its Minister for the East African Community Affairs Samuel Sitta when he was recently quoted by the media as having remarked “Why should you help your neighbor when he is the aggressor?
The Minister said his country is against a section and clause in the protocol that requires partner states to assist each other when it at war.
The other reason was that Tanzania itself was involve in similar and arrangement with the Southern African Development Community {SADC},which could clash with the East African Community protocol.
A defense protocol would give legal teeth to regional co-operation in case one of the members is involved in a war with a non-EAC member because member countries would be obliged to assist.
Tanzania, however, finally signed the report last week after its complaints were addressed by the Heads of State Summit in Bujumbura.
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