Editor,

Permit me to express the following opinion on the circulated exhortations in your pages for Rwanda to vote for Alfa in the Tusker Project Fame 3.

Though I respect the right to self expression even when I might disagree with the views expressed, allow me to state that I consider opinions such as those given by Lilian Cyakwera are dangerously misplaced and need to be discouraged with alacrity for the following reasons:

1.  This competition is about identifying musical and performing arts talents.  It is not a football match involving various nationalities which require such parochial attitudes as indicated by Lillian and others of similar attitude.

It matters not that the winner should be Tanzanian, Rwandan, Kenyan, Ugandan, Burundian, so long as at the close of this competition we have identified a visible talent that will do all of us East Africans proud.

2. Nationalistic appeals indicate a propensity to introspective preoccupation and a narrowness of thinking. It is essentially the basic ingredient to conflicts in societies, because it generates intolerance. 

It is clear intellectual bankruptcy. 

3. Was this TPF3 contest to be determined purely by such narrow nationalistic considerations, there is little possibility that Alpha would win regardless of the talent he might manifest.

4. We lose sight of the noble objectives of the East African integration with such parochial expressions.

I will vote for Alpha by his presentation of his Musical and Performing Arts talent, not because he is Rwandan or Kenyan like myself.  Let him prove himself as a such and only as such.

Tom Marrinka
Nairobi, Kenya,
somoinaa@gmail.com