EALA members should put East Africa Community first

Editor, RE: “EALA MPs should not come up with unreasonable demands” (The New Times, August 19). Did these people learn nothing from the derision and opprobrium they attracted with the circus surrounding the Margaret Zziwa impeachment and forced resignation from the position of Speaker? At the time East African public opinion was solidly behind the majority of our regional parliamentarians for standing up to a Speaker who seemed more interested in her perks of office and in her own self-aggrandizement than in serving the people she was appointed to serve. But it now seems that the rest of the Assembly, in a rush to serve their own self-interest, have forgotten the high principles they so effectively espoused and for which we admired and supported them during their fight with their Speaker. Do they understand the income levels of the overwhelming majority of East African Community citizens they now want to saddle with these colossal amounts for each member? If they feel insufficiently facilitated by the generous package of pay and allowances that they are paid on the backs of ordinary East African citizens, the majority of whom have to struggle mightily just to be able to put at least two meals on the family table each day, it is perhaps time these Assembly members tried other work that would be able to provide them with such high incomes, plus generous funds to acquire such expensive wheels at the employers expense. Then we could replace them with new members more attuned to the straitened means of the citizens they allegedly represent but whom they instead seem to want to treat as marks for the fleecing. Mwene Kalinda

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EALA members should put East Africa Community first