The Constitutional Court has today dismissed a petition challenging a resolution by National Resistance Movement (NRM) to front president Yoweri Museveni as the party’s presidential sole candidate in next year’s general elections and beyond.
A majority decision by three justices Including acting Cheif Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo, Cheborion Barishaki and Christopher Madrama dismissed the petition filed by a group of 11 MPs against their mother party NRM.
The justices said the petition highlights no violations that would require a constitutional interpretation, which is the core role of the Constitutional court.
They have now ordered that the 11 MPs jointly pay costs to NRM party for dragging it before a wrong court as they would have taken their complaints including their party fronting a sole presidential flag bearer and blocking them from attending the Kyankwanzi caucus meeting last year to the Highcourt that is empowered with the jurisdiction of enforcement of rights.
Having lost the bid to overturn the sole candidature resolution, legislators Theodore Sekikuubo, Barnabas Tinkasiimiire, Mbwatekamwa Gaffa, Monicah Amonding, John Baptist Nambeshe, Patrick Nsamba, Samuel Lyomoki, Sylvia Akello, Susan Amero, James Acidri and Moses Adome Bildard have given express instructions to their lawyer Medard Ssegona to appeal against this decision to the Supreme court because it’s a matter of national importance.
Ssegona has asked the Constitutional court registrar Mary Babirye who read the ruling on behalf of the justices to hurriedly prepare a certified copy of the court’s judgment to enable his clients to go to the highest court of the land considering that the Electoral road map is already out.
The said MPs filed the petition last year contending that the act of NRM’s CEC declaring M7 as a sole candidate in its four day retreat at Chobe Safari Lodge in Nwoya district blocked and suffocated interests of other individuals in the party who would have wanted to hold the party’s flag in the 2021 presidential elections.
These also claim that the CEC had no mandate to declare M7 as a presidential candidate for the 2021 elections in the middle of the current term because it’s five-year tenure of office is due to expire in July 2020 and therefore has no business in the coming elections
The MPs further wanted the Constitutional court to intervene in the internal governance of their party which they contend is not democratic because their party’s Secretary General Kasule Lumumba unfairly blocked them from participating in the parliamentary caucus retreat at Kyankwazi where the sole candidature resolution was adopted.
However, the other two justices who were on the panel; Kenneth Kakuru and Fredrick Egonda-Ntede deferred from their colleagues’ thinking and ruled that the MPs had raised issues in their petition which required to be determined by the Constitutional court.
