Museveni urges move from Assembly to integration

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has urged the East African countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to expedite economic and political integration in the region by means of removing the "cultural mutilation" brought about by colonial boundaries, according to news reports from the opening of the new East African Legislative Assembly (EALA). "As long as the boundaries still exist, we shall respect them, but we political leaders are capable of removing them," Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper quoted Museveni as saying. Museveni told the Assembly, which he officially opened on Monday at the Kampala International Conference Centre on behalf of the other regional heads of state (Daniel arap Moi of Kenya and Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania) that African political leaders had failed to unite the continent in the past because they "lacked vision and ideology", Radio Uganda reported on Tuesday. "History compels us to move towards integration with greater speed than hitherto. Full integration would serve the interests of our people better. We must modernise. If we don't, we shall perish," the Ugandan government-owned New Vision newspaper quoted Museveni as saying. The EALA was inaugurated on 30 November 2001 in Arusha, northern Tanzania - together with the East African Court of Justice - as part of the efforts of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to revive the defunct East African Community (EAC), which collapsed in 1977 as a result of political differences among the member states. The current East African heads of state signed a treaty providing for the re-establishment of the EAC in Arusha on 30 November 1999, with a view to paving the way towards economic integration in the region. The EALA, comprising 32 assembly members (nine elected from each partner state plus five ex-officio members), is the EAC's legislative organ, according to information posted on the EAC web site. See www.eachq.org/News/PressR2001_11_27.html The EALA's proceedings will be covered live by the media, including television, according to the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC). Of the three national parliaments, only the Tanzanian parliament's proceedings are currently covered live on television. The Speaker of the new regional parliament, Abdulrahman Kinana, who was elected at the EALA's first sitting, said the new assembly would "avoid the pitfalls" of the old EALA, which died with the collapse of the EAC in 1977, KBC reported on its web site on Monday, 20 January. "We want to be accountable to the people of East Africa, who elected us," Kinana said. The success or failure of the EAC will, however, be "hinged on the goodwill" of the heads of the member states, according to analysts. Walter Oyugi, a professor of political science at the University of Nairobi told IRIN on Tuesday that he was "not convinced that the [regional integration] project has reached the point of takeoff, whereby it has achieved sufficient internalisation by all the stakeholders". "If you look at the background of the present cooperation venture, what emerges is that it is a project of the three leaders. It was sold as a fait accompli, and its future appears dependent on the goodwill of the three leaders," Oyugi said. "I don't think the institution will have any impact in terms of pushing the cooperation forward, because it will operate at the whims of the three heads of state," he added. Phillip Kichana, a programme officer with the Nairobi-based Institute for Education in Democracy, said it would be "much easier" to mobilise resources and support for economic integration than for a political federation, "due to political and cultural pressures, such as national sovereignty, colonial history and national languages". "If it [political integration] happens, it would be at a superficial level... Muscles tighten when you talk about political integration, because there is too much at stake," he told IRIN.