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{
    "id": 837734,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/837734/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 365,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Bondo, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Gideon Ochanda",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1264,
        "legal_name": "Gideon Ochanda Ogolla",
        "slug": "gideon-ochanda-ogolla"
    },
    "content": "got a way of how to address them we may move a little bit faster. All these are bringing in issues of fear and suspicion until when you are somewhere, you are very quickly noticed that even the way you are walking, talking and behaving, you are definitely Kenyan. These are some of the institutionalised attitudes that we are facing as a country. That aside, issues of commitment need to be demonstrated in a much wider way. It needs to be demonstrated even in terms of how we look at the East African Community. In terms of commitments particularly in terms of paying up as members, we have done fairly well. Kenya is really ahead of the others but then this is not commensurate with the kind of things that happen in the region. We have a general secretary from a member state and that member state has never paid anything and that is the Secretary General of East African Region. I think these are some of the things that we really need to look at. I think Kenya is hosting one or two of the commissions of the EAC and yet we are really ahead in terms of our contribution and stuff like that. In my view, the issue of commitment needs to be tied with some of the things that the region does. The other thing that I wanted to mention is how EALA operates. I think there is some little challenge here. In our National Assembly, the biggest source of our agenda is from the Executive - the Government. Ninety per cent or so of the agenda we consider here is drawn from the Executive. In a similar manner, for purposes of enhancing regional integration in my view, the East African Legislative Assembly needs to look at a lot of issues that are generated from the Council of Ministers and the secretariat of EALA. Yet you realise that EALA mostly considers individual Bills. Just before we went for recess, we were looking at a report that stated that almost two or three Bills that were discussed lapsed. Some of those Bills were critical and important and would have enhanced some of the things that we are talking about. Hon. Ndindi is talking about this lady from Safaricom. In one of the Bills that lapsed, there were very clear ways of how to handle issues such as those ones. That Bill lapsed. It has to be regenerated or it just dies. The Secretariat and the Council of Ministers of the East African region need to ensure that EALA works in the same way our Assembly works here. We need to isolate a number of issues that can move the integration forward. They are many. We are talking about legislations and laws that are not harmonised. Some of our laws are completely different from those of Burundi. They are completely different from those of other countries. How then do we enhance issues of cooperation? If the Secretariat and the Council of Ministers were to concentrate only on issues that are challenges to integration, then EALA would be more active in terms of what it does than what we are seeing it do today. Those are some of the things that if we looked at, things will move. The harmonisation process of our legislatures and the laws that exist is fairly slow. This is exactly what is bringing about a lot of the conflicts that we have around. You wonder why we talk about one-stop border posts on land but then we fight over Lake Victoria. We are harmonising and looking at how to do things properly at the border post in Isibania, Namanga and Busia but we constantly fight at the Lake. Why should we have a problem in a place that should not even have a border? We should not even have a border line. But we are constantly fighting with Uganda. There are all manner of forces, fights and torture issues. We are giving a lot of space for pirates to operate in the Lake like I witnessed last week. As I second this, there is much more that EALA can do. Much of what EALA can do needs to be generated and fast-tracked from the Secretariat and our Council of Ministers."
}