THE EAST AFRICAN Community (EAC) has geared up efforts to create a draft Constitution that will lead to a regional political federation. Senior officials from Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi and Uganda held a meeting in Kampala on Thursday as part of implementing a recommendation to fast-track political federation which was made by Heads of State from Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda in their recent meetings. “We have agreed on the principles and mechanisms that will ensure clear guidance on drafting a constitution that will ultimately lead to formation of a political federation,” said James Musoni, Rwanda’s minister for local government, after attending the ministerial meeting. The officials’ meeting is the first of its kind since the three leaders—Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame—urged fast-tracking the bloc’s political federation and revamping the region’s dilapidated infrastructure in their summit held in June in Entebbe, Uganda. And Burundi agreed to join the process during a follow-up Heads of State summit that was held last month in Mombasa, Kenya. Like the High Level Task Force (HLTF) that drafted the Common Market Protocol, a team of technocrats who will draft the constitution for EAC’s political federation will include experts in different relevant fields drawn from across the bloc’s partner states. Ministers from EAC partner states who were assigned overseeing matters of forming a political federation will report progress to the Heads of State summit scheduled at the end of next month in Kigali. Tanzania not part of the process The four EAC partner states—Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and Burundi—are applying the so called “variable geometry principle” in regional integration whereby some of the members within the community can move faster than others on some matters. The East African Court of Justice (EACJ) in 2009 ruled that the principle is in perfect harmony with the requirement of consensus in decision-making at the East African Community (EAC).
