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Nine Tanzanian Parliamentarians Chosen for EAC Assembly
The National Assembly of Tanzania (Parliament), Friday elected nine members of different professions as legislators for the forthcoming East Africa Legislative Assembly (EALA), or the House of the East African Community (EAC).
Announcing the election results in the House in central town of Dodoma, the Returning Officer Kipenka Mussa said that three women and six men emerged winners.
Mussa, who is Clerk of the National Assembly, said that the three winners out of 10 women aspirants are Kate Kamba, a former cabinet minister, Beatrice Shelukindo from the mainland and Mahafuza Alex Hamid from Zanzibar. They are all from the ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM).
The returning office said that five men from CCM, Ambassador Isack Sepetu, Said Bakari Jecha in Zanzibar, Abdulrahman Kinana, former defense minister, Dr. Harrison Mwakyembe, a lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam's faculty of law and George Nangale in the mainland passed the voting.
The sole winner from the opposition party is the NCCR-Mageuzi candidate Mabere Nyaucho Marando, who defeated three opposition aspirants.
The arrangements for the swearing-in ceremony of the elected EALA legislators will be announced by the EALA itself in August.
Initially a total of 59 aspirants vied for the seats on CCM ticket, 46 of whom were from the mainland and 13 others from Zanzibar, and the list was filtered to 24 by the party's central committee. The opposition produced four candidates.
Each of the three EAC member states, namely Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, is supposed to elect nine members to the Assembly, which is to be located in Tanzania's northern town of Arusha, but the method of electing the MPs is to be decided by member states.
In Tanzania, the ruling CCM, through the National Assembly, has decided that eight out of the nine EAC MPs will come from CCM and only one will be nominated by the five opposition parties that have MPs in the country's assembly.
House Speaker Pius Msekwa said that the number was arrived at on the basis of the ratio of party its in the National Assembly, where CCM has the majority.
As the original EAC, once the pride of east Africans, collapsed in 1977, mainly because of political, ideological and economic differences among the three neighbors during the regimes of Presidents Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Idi Amin of Uganda.
Efforts to re-launch the new regional body started in 1992 when Moi, Museveni and ex-Tanzanian president Ali Hassan Mwinyi met in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, during the Commonwealth Heads of State and Government meeting.
The new EAC was founded on November 30, 1999 when Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda signed a treaty to replace the then East African Cooperation.
It will expand and deepen economic, political and social cooperation among the three neighboring states with a combined population of about 80 million and territories of 1.8 million square kilometers.
The 153-Article Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community says that a Customs Union will be established as the entry point of the Community, followed by a Common Market, subsequently a Monetary Union and ultimately a Political Federation of the East African States.
The main organs of the EAC are the Summit of Heads of State, the Council of Ministers, the Coordination Committee, Sectoral Committees, the East African Court of Justice, the East African Legislative Assembly and the Secretariat.
The efforts, since the effective resumption of regional cooperation in 1996, have been taken up mainly by laying the groundwork for regional integration.
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