The editor in chief of the Sunday Times said it all under the banner of the APRM recommendations. The review team in Kenya had in 2005 stressed the need for East African regional integration and Kenya was urged to forge the same.

In his response six months later, Kenya's President Kibaki confirmed the same to his peers in Banjul. After all, he and his minister for Regional Cooperation had earlier been elected to chair the Regional Summit and Council of Ministers respectively, having taken over from Tanzania.

However, what has happened just weeks before President Kibaki inaugurates the second East African Legislative Assembly at the end of this month is baffling if not embarrassing not only to the President but to Kenyans as a whole.

What started as the usual domestic political wrangling among political parties has now taken new and damaging dimensions that will leave all parties bruised and looking silly in the eyes of East Africans. Kenyans have finally imported their most unwanted product in to the region; political wrangling.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article that earned me the wrath of my brothers and sisters in Tanzania. I had argued for regional political federation while at the same time listing the fears Tanzanians had over this federation thing. I gave some samples of opinions of Arushans, who happen to host the East African Community Headquarters and if all goes as planned, will be the envied hosts of the East African Federal Government's seat of power.

The fears that probably haunt Tanzanians to this day is the realization that a federal state that will lump them together with greedy Kenyans and cunning Ugandans will definitely render them subordinate citizens in the new arrangement. Beyond the fear of better educated and better experienced businessmen from the two countries, Tanzanians are weary of endless conflicts constantly reported in the press from diverse regions of Kenya and Uganda. If the Northerners are not fighting the Museveni Regime, Kenyans are busy butchering themselves over land, water or petty ethnic conflicts in their Nairobi slums.

These are the violent horror stories scaring Tanzanians stiff.

Now Kenyans have given Tanzanians, more so Arushans what to smile about.

They have succeeded in scoring a first one- taken their squabbles to a still fragile political arrangement.

They have differed over the party nominations to the EALA and having failed to agree on the candidates at home, the losers have taken the war to the East African Court of Justice with a real possibility of delaying if not derailing altogether the swearing in ceremony of the Second Parliament in Arusha at the end of this month.

Why are Tanzanians laughing? They are laughing because they can see Kenyans making fools of themselves. Here they are with their President chairing the Summit, their Minister chairing the Council of Ministers, in effect making them the conveners of the forth coming meeting, yet they are the first to go to court to hold East Africa at ransom!

Tanzanians are laughing because they don't trust Kenyans with anything. They cannot trust Kenyans to be fair in the regional government when this unfairness is embedded in their culture back home. It is this same greed for power and everything material that derailed the EAC in 1977.

The same greed for power has stalked the Kibaki administration for four years that culminated in the split in the coalition that won the 2002 elections. That same greed stalled the new constitution, ripped the country of millions of dollars in Anglo Leasing and now makes Kenya lose more than $ 1 billion annually through graft.

The same greed for power and glory has led to exclusion of the not so politically correct MPs from major Parliamentary Standing Committees in Kenya's Parliament and finally crept into the nomination process of the EALA.

What a shame! Can't we for one moment think beyond our immediate vested interests as Kenyans? Can't we see that the East African dream is bigger than all of us even as Partner States? Why is it so difficult to agree on at least a single issue as important as the EALA that has far reaching consequences on the lives of millions of people in our region? Why mess it up for short term grandstanding and political brinkmanship?

On this score, all warring parties stand condemned. All of them are as guilty as charged. But the guiltiest of them all are those hardliners in the Kibaki Administration that always forget that once in power, the party in charge should not engage in partisan politics on matters of national pride and image. Once in power, the ruling party must remember that there is a nation to serve and services to deliver and that nation includes even those that may be opposed to the regime ideologically.

This nation is crying loud for leadership that is forgiving, accommodating and inclusive.

It is crying loud for a leadership that will one day get rid of vindictiveness, treachery, nepotism, cronyism and punishment for holding divergent opinion.

It is crying for a leadership that will one day see beyond the moment.

Let us pray for that leadership before it is too late.