THE PARTIES PLATFORM (TPP)
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22nd June; 2007
PRESS BRIEF
- The secretive East African cooperation summit.
Although we are not against the East African community, which is of much more benefit to the people of East Africa, we are totally against the methods and approaches and the secret meetings which the leaders of east Africa are involved in. And worse still they want to involve the population of East Africa in things they don’t understand.
We have examples of other cooperations which have ever happened in the world e.g. European Union started in 1948 but up to now it is not a complete Union they are still building and their foundations are firm. Why is the hurry for the East African Community? Even to the extent that the people who are intended to benefit from the community are not aware! What is the rationale of first trucking politics before you tell the people of the agenda. People cannot go with you unless they know where they are going. By this time all our people are not aware of what is taking place when are you going to inform the people of East Africa of what is happening?
They keep telling us about the big market that will be formed, unfortunately, the market is not got through head count of the population but the by the potential of the people to buy. Therefore, the statistics of total population you are giving the people of East Africa are wrong. You would rather help the people of East Africa to become a foundational market before you think of fast-tracking politics. The records show that more than half of our population earn less one dollar a day!
The Benchmarks for the cooperation should be very clear so that all the countries are at per and the relationship is clear. For us we have seen leaders change the constitution for their individual benefit, we have seen them manipulate and undermining the institutions e.g. the judiciary in Uganda. We no longer trust them. How sure are we that the East African community will continue. What guarantees do they give us that this cooperation will not follow the footsteps of the previous one especially when the population is not involved.
We no longer trust some of our leaders, first they have failed to build institutions and respect them.
- Although we thank and appreciate the Minister for burning polythene bags (buveera) on the account of the environment, but what about the investors who have invested in factories for buveera.
The government should create a fund to help those investors to either change their businesses or help them to pay their loans, and also to compensate the workers who have lost jobs because of this new government policy. The government should be concerned about its citizens.
V.P Bukenya wants to head Makerere.
We in TPP and indeed FIL, we suggest that he should remove his name from the candidate’s list. According to the University’s rules, the candidate should be financially stable, of high integrity and with a minimum of a Bachelors Degree.
We suggest that on the issue of high integrity, Bukenya is wanting. He was involved in witchcraft, in adultery, even we here that, as a Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, there were some scandals.
Emmanuel Tumusiime
Chairman
