Africa-Press – Uganda. A human rights watchdog company has petitioned the Supreme Court challenging staying the implementation of the late lawyer Bob Kasango’s Constitutional Court orders.
Key to orders was that judges should first resign their judicial assignments before taking up the Executive/ constitutional postings.
Legal Brains Trust Ltd in its application filed before the Supreme Court last Thursday said the same court mechanically passed the ruling to stay the implementation in Kasango judgment.
The company wants the same ruling set aside, among other requests.“The ruling contravened known principals upon which applications for interim orders are granted in constitutional matters. When I saw the coram on the cause-list, I realised that the 2015 constitutional amendment, which requires seven justices of the Supreme Court to be empaneled in appeals from the Constitutional Court, had not been complied with,” Ms Isabella Nakiyonga, one of the company’s lawyers, states in her affidavit.
“On March 31, indeed, only five justices turned up, and the applicants’ counsel orally moved court to allow them proceed ex parte,” she added.
Halt court order
On Wednesday last week, a panel of five justices led by Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo issued an interim order, halting the implementation of the Constitutional Court orders.
The other justices were Stella Arach-Amoko, Rubby Aweri Opio, Ezekiel Muhagunzi, and Paul Mugamba.Last week’s decision reinstated the Director of Public Prosecutions, Justice Jane Frances Abodo, the chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Justice Simon Mugenyi Byabakama, and the chairperson of the Judicial Service Commission, Benjamin Kabiito after they had earlier been affected by the Kasango decision.“We have heard this application ex-parte (one-sided). We have given the application due consideration. We find that the matters raised in the application are substantially important points of law for the court’s consideration,” ruled Justice Mugamba on behalf of the panel of five justices last week.“Accordingly, we allow the application and hereby, grant an interim order staying the execution of the orders of the constitutional petition 16 of 2016, dated March 18, 2021. Thus, the order shall remain in force till the disposal of the substantive application for stay of execution or any other order of the court” he added.Further in its application, the human rights watchdog avers that it was not right for the Supreme Court to have proceeded with staying the Kasango orders without involving his legal representative.
“As a lawyer, I observed that Bob Kasango, the respondent in the constitutional application no. 2 of 2021, had been buried on March 28, 2021 pursuant to High Court Family Division Mis. Cause no. 17 of 2021 and it was not proper that the court should proceed without proper and due diligence by the applicants to serve notice upon a representative of the deceased using all lawful available means.” Counsel Nakiyonga states in her affidavit.
Adding: “I went through the Constitution, the Succession Act, the constitutional and Supreme Court rules and I found out that proceedings without a legal representative of the deceased (Kasango) was not permissible under any law in Uganda.”
