Members of Parliament (MPs) have requested equal representation at the East Africa Legislative Assembly (EALA).
The requests were made Thursday afternoon during debate on the section on the election of the members of EALA.
Budadiri West MP and former Leader of Opposition in Parliament (LoP), said Uganda adopted the multi-party system of governance and should be represented at EALA basing on parties. “Uganda already went multi party, the representation to should based on the different parties,” he said.
Nandala Mafabi’s opinion was supported by other MPs including another former Leader of Opposition in Parliament, Ogenga Latigo (Agago South), Latif Sebaggala (Kawempe North) and Minister Chris Baryomunsi among others.
Baryomunsi, the State Minister for Urban Planning said there is a need for the representation of the different shades of opinions, political parties.
“When the parties are nominating their candidates they make sure that all interest groups are taken care of ,” said Baryomunsi.
Latigo expressed fears that once they go with majority representation, NRM would still dominate even at EALA. “If we go by the majority representation, we will still have an NRM majority in EALA,” he said.
However, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga responded by saying EALA members are elected to represent their country not parties. “When members are elected to go to EALA they don’t represent a political party, they represent Uganda,” she said.
Uganda has nine slots at EALA. However, of the nine, NRM has been taking five slots and leaving the remaining four to other parties.
Meanwhile, Nandala Mafabi told the house ‘tongue-in-cheek that there was no need to worry about the representation of the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) at EALA, saying it recently merged with NRM and that the parties ‘are now one’.
