By Brendah Atukunda and Shivan Tuhirirwe,
NATIONAL
The National Unity Platform has announced that they will not field any candidate for the East African Legislative Assembly- EALA Parliament in Arusha Tanzania.
This was after a meeting in Namanve Mukono by the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) which resolved to restrain from the election accusing the ruling NRM of selfishly allocating themselves 6 slots of the 9 representatives and uses it for patronage.
“NUP discussed the upcoming elections for East African Legislative Assembly. It was noted that EALA is an extremely important platform which should benefit the nation. Unfortunately for Uganda, it has been hijacked by NRM which now decides all 9 representatives and uses it for patronage.” NUP said
According to Article 50 of the East African Community treaty, EALA members are elected by their respective country’s national legislature. Article 50 also requires the said members to reflect their country’s political parties, opinions, gender composition, and other special groups.
Article 50 (1) of the East African treaty states that the National Assembly of each partner State shall elect, not from among its members, nine members of the assembly, who shall represent as much as it is feasible, the various political parties represented in the national assembly, shades of opinion, gender and other special interest groups in that partner state, in accordance with such procedure as the national assembly of each partner state may determine.
This is however a different case in Uganda where NRM allocates itself 6 slots leaving the opposition and independents with only 3 and are subjected to an election by parliament
Now the NUP NEC members say they will not front a candidate to run for the EALA citing out unfairness and inequities to the process.
It should be recalled that the NRM party Electoral Commission chairperson, Dr. Tanga Odoi recently made it clear that they will as a party support Democratic Party’s Gerald Siranda and the UPC candidate.
“We have already decided as the NRM CEC to uphold the status quo and retain all the incumbent EALA MPs to serve their 2nd term,” Odoi said before adding
“We shall support the DP and UPC candidates. We cannot support FDC or NUP because they don’t want to be in IPOD,” he explained.
The communique states that NUP leadership tasked the party legal team to study the matter and explore the feasibility to petition the East African Court of Justice over Uganda’s representation in EALA.
