EAC political federation report due next month

The National Consultative Committee (NCC) on the East African Community (EAC) will reveal views of Rwandans on the creation of the bloc’s political federation in a report due early next month, the committee’s Chairperson told The New Times yesterday. Prof. Anastase Shyaka said the committee is currently working with another ministerial committee set up by the cabinet to make final touches on the report and make translation into English and Kinyarwanda before it can be presented to the cabinet for publication. “All that is remaining is formalities. I am very confident that we will have finished by January,” he said in a telephone interview as he revealed the expected time to publish the committee’s report. The committee was set up early this year to get views from different members of the Rwandan public on whether there should be a political federation among the five EAC partner states and if this federation should be fast tracked. The NCC was due to release its final report last month but according to Shyaka, they could not meet their intended deadline because they were involved in a lot of work related to the East- African Community. “There are different activities [within the community] these days,” he said. The committee conducted surveys to gather views of Rwandans on a quick creation of the community’s political federation in September this year following a countrywide sensitization campaign about the regional bloc that had started in May. “In the sensitization we were gathering information that I can call qualitative,” Prof. Shyaka had said in September as his committee launched the survey to collect views of Rwandans on the federation. The survey was intended to help Rwandans to express their ideas on issues like free movements of capital, persons, services, and goods in member countries of the community. The respondents had to give answers to twenty questions on the survey’s questionnaire among other responses. The report will make the country join other member states of the bloc to have an opinion of their respective citizens on following same laws made by a common parliament, have the same government, currency, and flag, among other things to be harmonized among five member states of the community. So far Ugandans and Kenyans manifested the will for this federation’s fast tracking, while many Tanzanians supported the political federation but had reservations on its fast tracking. Burundians, who like Rwandans are new members to the bloc, are also expected to provide their stand soon. Ends