National consultations for the drafting of the constitution of the East African Community (EAC) political confederation are set to resume across the bloc’s member states, the EAC said in a statement Monday.
The statement issued by the EAC headquarters in Tanzania’s northern city of Arusha said Kenya is set to hold the sessions in May 2023.
The statement said public consultations were held in Burundi in January 2020 and in Uganda in April-May 2021 but postponed due to the containment measures imposed across the region to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Regional constitutional experts drafting the EAC political federation constitution are set to hold consultations with various stakeholders, including the civil society, local leaders, opinion leaders and the business community, to seek their views on what kind of political confederation they would desire for the EAC.
According to the statement, the roadmap for drafting the constitution is set to be reviewed by constitutional experts during the period of consultations in Kenya and submitted to EAC member states for planning purposes.
Peter Mathuki, the EAC secretary general, said the EAC secretariat was committed to fast-tracking the process and was striving to hold public consultations across all EAC member states in the next two years.
Mathuki made the remarks when he held talks with the chairperson of the constitutional experts, Justice Benjamin Joses Odoki, at the EAC headquarters in Arusha.
Odoki said the experts were expected to deliver a report on the proposed model for the EAC political confederation and draft the EAC political confederation constitution as a transitional model.
The EAC member states are Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. Enditem
