Raila offers to help resolve EAC controversy
Former Kenyan prime minister, Raila Odinga. PHOTO | FILE
Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga has offered to help resolve the controversy threatening to break up the East African Community (EAC).
Mr Odinga appealed to Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta, Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), Jakaya Kikwete (Tanzania) and Paul Kagame (Rwanda) to urgently pick a Panel of Statesmen from the EAC to resolve the controversy that has seen Tanzania threaten to pull out of the political and economic bloc.
“I want to propose to regional heads of State that a panel of statesmen from the EAC be put together to work out a mechanism to resolve the impasse and put the union back on track,” he told a press conference.
SIT ON THE PANEL
Asked whether he was ready to sit on the panel if picked by President Kenyatta, Mr Odinga answered in the affirmative.
“Yes, I’m ready to represent Kenya on that panel,” he responded.
Mr Odinga has previously resisted overtures from the Jubilee government to appoint him Kenya’s envoy at large, with his supporters terming it a ploy to push him into political retirement.
Mr Odinga’s concerns come in the wake of reports from Dar es Salaam that Tanzania was considering pulling out of the EAC.
Tanzania’s minister for EAC Affairs, Samuel Sitta is reported to have told a charged Parliament in Dodoma that Dar will not wait for a “divorce certificate” from Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, but will “shoot before we are shot.”
The minister spoke on the same day Presidents Kenyatta, Kagame, Museveni and Salva Kiir of South Sudan signed a host of protocols and agreements in Kigali, including free movement of goods and persons, infrastructural development and transformation into a single Customs Union.
The pacts were signed on the sidelines of the three-day “Transform Africa Summit” to which Tanzania and Burundi, both EAC member states were not invited.
Mr Sitta confirmed that not a single Tanzanian minister attended the Kigali event. The only senior government official at the function was the permanent secretary in the ministry of EAC Affairs.
Claiming the trio of Messrs Kenyatta, Kagame and Museveni were engaged in some “dirty game”, Mr Sitta assured the MPs that Tanzania will not be bound by any decisions arrived at by the leaders of Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda pertaining to the regional bloc.
Mr Odinga warned that Kenya would be the biggest loser if Tanzania pulled out of the regional bloc because it will be unable to access markets in the DRC and Malawi.
“Kenya and the rest of EAC stand to suffer immensely economically if Tanzania were to team up with DRC and Burundi in another union. The Tanzania-DRC-Burundi coalition would effectively block EAC, Kenya included, from accessing the markets of Central and Southern Africa,” he noted.
“We must make no mistake about the potential might of DRC, Tanzania and Burundi put together. DRC remains a virgin land of vast potential. But it is famed to have natural resources, including potential for electric power sufficient for the entire continent of Africa,” he explained.
To Mr Odinga, the ideal situation would be a coalition comprising Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and South Sudan which would jointly entice DRC to come on board.
