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{
    "id": 282064,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/282064/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 463,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. George Nyamweya",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. Perhaps I should start by mentioning that I am a Member of the Departmental Committee on Defence and Foreign Relations and I may want to clarify a little bit what my good friend, the Deputy Leader of Government Business, has said. Indeed, the reason why we got into trouble with the last people who went to EALA was because we actually appointed or selected them. That is what took us to court. We are required to have an election and all the 222 Members, perhaps less those who are no longer with us, become the electors. We have become the electors ourselves and whatever we do, we must conduct an election. Thinking about the rules on how to achieve the Constitutional requirement and the Treaty requirement that we must have regional, gender and all these other interests in place, is why we were proposing that we widen the nominees so that during voting, we try and achieve this balance. The second thing I want to point out is that I went to Arusha the other day, on the Extraordinary Summit of the EAC Heads of State and one of the things that came out which was particularly embarrassing to both our Head of State and ourselves, as a country, is that for some reason or another we do not appear to take our financial commitments to the East African Community seriously. We have countries like Rwanda and Burundi who have already paid. They have already remitted between 110 and 120 per cent when we are still idling around. These countries are looking up to us to support the whole system. So, we need to urge, as a Committee and as Parliament that we give some seriousness to our biggest trading partner, that is the EAC. With regard to the institutions we are building there, we must put our commitment into making sure that they work because we are expected to give this leadership. We see this when we go there and they ask us what is the next thing we are doing. They look to us as we develop a new Constitution and our political parties. It is very important that we take very serious corrective measures on this one. When it comes to nominations by the parties, I think it would be important for parliamentary parties which will be doing their nominations to look at East Africans. The people we are sending there should not just be people that we want to give jobs. I think they should have a clear picture of the East Africa that we want to attain and the ultimate objective of our federation, the common market and so on. I think it is critically important in that sense. Finally, and maybe the Deputy Leader of Government Business might want to take cognizance of this, the Ministry of the East African Community, for some peculiar reason is taken as one of those Ministries which are a by the way sort of thing and yet in my view, it is probably the most important Ministry we could possibly have in terms of our strategic, geographic, economic, political, social and security considerations. Our future is tied up to the Community and even us, as a Committee, when we have the Minister coming to us, we find that they feel as if they are unwanted or like the poor cousin coming up and yet the Ministries we oversee like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of State for Defence and the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) Department are security Ministries. For some reason, it seems as if the Government itself does not seem to appreciate the value of that particular portfolio and the energy and resources which we put into it."
}