There was disagreement in the East African Community Council of Ministers Thursday over the way Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda were \u201cfast-tracking\u201d towards a political federation, monetary union and other projects, leaving out others.<\/p>\n
In a heated closed meeting Thursday, Tanzania and Burundi took exception to their three counterparts forming a \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d, incorporating South Sudan to agree on a cross border railway and customs arrangements. South Sudan is yet to join.<\/p>\n
The high level meeting at Imperial Royale Hotel was convened by EAC minister Shem Bageine to reach a consensus on a number of issues.<\/p>\n
Bageine\u2019s communication that he was set to hand over the chair to Kenya, and that 80% of the decisions in the report had been agreed upon, attracted questions from Tanzania\u2019s EAC minister Samuel Sitta .<\/p>\n
\u201cThe charter says the chair is on one year rotational basis. As far as we are concerned, Rwanda is the next chair. The rest of us don\u2019t know about this arrangement of Kenya taking over,\u201d he charged.<\/p>\n
He castigated the \u201cstrange behaviour\u201d of some countries, saying in the spirit of cooperation, Tanzania had deregistered 22 companies, which were not conforming to treaty provisions on customs.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we are concerned with the actions of Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. What we thought was a normal state visit by President Kenyatta to Uganda, [but] having reached there, it seems President Kagame was invited and they started this socalled \u2018coalition of the willing\u2019, which in itself is an insult to Tanzania,\u201d Sitta said.<\/p>\n
He said at the last meeting in Ethiopia, a side meeting of EAC was called, with the exclusion of Tanzania and Burundi.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen my foreign affairs minister asked whether we were welcome, we were told no,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Burundi\u2019s EAC minister Leontine Nzeyimana wondered what precedent was being set, given that Rwanda might want to regain its chair after Kenya again leading to more sidelining of other members, but Bageine said it would already have foregone its turn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you need to tell us the truth because we are duplicating processes by having parallel discussions. Why do we sit here together and agree on common decisions, but on the other side other meetings are going behind our backs?<\/p>\n
\u201cAre we, therefore, wasting our time on issues like the political federation on which others are ahead of us?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
At some point, the Tanzanian minister asked why Bageine was seated so quietly amidst the accusations like \u201ca cat satisfied with the milk\u201d, an accusation Uganda\u2019s foreign affairs minister Sam Kutesa did not take lightly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s an insult to us, honourable minister.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sitta said: \u201cSorry, if it\u2019s an insult, I withdraw it\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kutesa explained that the model the EAC was following was agreed upon at the 14th ordinary summit, which considered the road map to the federation.<\/p>\n
The Kenyan delegation wondered why Sitta was hijacking the whole debate, when countries are allowed to agree among themselves and come up with joint positions even at summit level.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we agreed with Tanzania on promotion of joint tourism opportunities without other member states, why didn\u2019t Uganda or Rwanda complain?\u201d asked a member from Kenya.<\/p>\n
Kutesa quipped: \u201cWe as Uganda are not in the EAC to search for jobs either as presidents of the federation or secretariat. If anybody is harbouring any such sentiments it is unfortunate. We have a right to discuss with any member on trade and infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
This did not stop Sitta from continuing to wonder which model of political federation the three were fast-tracking towards.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody knows there is a two-track traction of the federation one of which includes a non-member South Sudan and the three member states. It will collapse if we don\u2019t tell each other the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tanzania, he added, is against fast-tracking the political federation because \u201cwe think it is a disaster with some people wanting to take over the leadership and tag their people along,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also wondered where the Secretariat of the \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d was in order to hold talks with it. \u201cIt\u2019s no use just inviting Tanzania and Burundi to the normal process when we don\u2019t know what the coalition agreed upon last night,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
New Vision<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was disagreement in the East African Community Council of Ministers Thursday over the way Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda were \u201cfast-tracking\u201d towards a political federation, monetary union and other projects, leaving out others. In a heated closed meeting Thursday, Tanzania and Burundi took exception to their three counterparts forming a \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d, incorporating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000049518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-11680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000049518,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11680.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11680.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11680.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11680.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11680.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11680.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000049518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11680"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=11680"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=11680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}