Rwanda picks new Eala members, DRC awaited

Arusha. Rwanda has picked its new East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) whose 5th Assembly will be inaugurated on December 19.

Six of the nine legislators nominated are women, two of them re-elected after having served in the 4th Assembly.

Rwanda now becomes the sixth country in the seven nation bloc to submit the names of its MPs after Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi and South Sudan.

The 5th Assembly will be inaugurated on December 19 when the 4th Assembly ends its tenure which started on December 17, 2017.

One of the MPs, who made a dramatic comeback, is Ms Fatuma Ndangiza, a former Rwanda ambassador to Tanzania.

Ms Ndangiza, an influential lawmaker often chairing the women caucus,was elected on the ticket of Inkotanyi political party which operates under the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF)

Another familiar face to make a comeback is Francois Uwumukiza who has represented Rwanda in the regional Assembly since 2017.

In Tanzania,too, only two of the current Eala members Abdullah Makame and Ngwaru Magembe have been nominated for the 5th Eala.

Five of those who had served for only one five-year term could not sail through the National Assembly scrutiny in Dodoma.

The new faces on the Tanzania Eala caucus are Angela Kizigha, Nadra Juma Mohamed. Dr Shogo Richard Mlozi and Machano Ali Machano.

Others are Ansar Abubakar Kachwamba, James Kinyasi Millya and Mashaka Khalfan Ngole.

Members of Eala, a legislative arm of the EAC, are elected for a five-year term, renewable once.

Each of the seven partner states has nine members in the House,bringing the total number of the legislators to 63.

Although there is no breakdown of gender in the list of the new MPs whose names have been sent in,indications are clear that the number of women will increase.

Way back in 2002, the EAC enacted a law stipulating a quota of one third of the elected MPs that reflect either gender.

The outgoing Eala Speaker and lawmaker from Rwanda Martin Ngoga believes women representation in the House will keep on rising.

His assertion is based on the premise that women representation in the Assembly has been rising beyond the established one third quota.

According to him, the first Assembly (Eala) whose tenure lasted from 2001 to 2006 ,had nine women out of the 27 elected MPs.

That translated to 30 percent of all the lawmakers; then from the three founder members of the Community; Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.

The second and third Assembly - 2007-2012 and 2012-2017 respectively - comprised 18 women out of the 45 elected members. They constituted 40 percent of the MPs.

By then, the number of the EAC partner states had gone up to five following the admission of Burundi and Rwanda in the bloc.

The Fourth Assembly was inaugurated in December 2017 and for the first time had members from South Sudan which joined the bloc in 2016.

That brought the total number of the legislators to 54 out of whom 22 are women or 40.7 percent of the MPs in the Fourth Assembly.

“These developments have been made possible by our Treaty in Article 50 which calls for sizable representation of either gender in the Assembly”, he said.

DR Congo is the only EAC member state which has not sent the names of its lawmakers as the December 19th deadline approaches.