Court of Appeal upholds MP Wakayima’s victory

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Court of Appeal has dismissed an election appeal challenging the victory of Nansana Municipality Member of Parliament Hannington Nsereko Wakayima Musoke.

A panel of three Justices, Deputy Chief Justice Richard Buteera, Catherine Bamugemereire and Irene Esther Mulyagonja on Thursday dismissed an appeal that was filed by Hamis Musoke Walusimbi on grounds that it was filed out of the 14 days stipulated time.

The Justices argued that Walusimbi’s justifications of seeking an extension of time to file his appeal were weak, lame, and unacceptable. Walusimbi asked the court for an extension on grounds that he was misled by the Court Registry staff that an appeal has to be filed together with a notice of appeal and record of proceedings from the High Court.

In the decision read by Justice Bamugemereire, the court ruled that this was unacceptable because there is no way how a junior staff of court would have misled Walusimbi’s lawyers as he had stated.

According to the Judges, Walusimbi ought to have considered a number of issues before he chose the lawyers who represented him such as doing due diligence, the cases they have handled before, their relationship among other issues.

They also added that considering the delay and time taken to file the appeal, it looked like it was an afterthought and Walusimbi had not intended to proceed up to the Court of Appeal.

They dismissed the case with costs for having been an abuse of the court process. Walusimbi was being represented by lawyers Abbas Bukenya, and Kabuye Twaha Haruna.

Wakayima who was represented by lawyer Richard Latigo welcomed the decision saying that he is going to demand heavy costs from Walusimbi on grounds that way back when he was first brought to the Court of Appeal, he lost a case and paid more than 200 million Shillings in costs.

The decision by the Judges arises from three consolidated applications from an appeal in which Wakayima’s rival Walusimbi was challenging the September 22, 2021 High Court decision. Wakayima of the National Unity Platform-NUP party garnered 67,862 votes while Walusimbi got 744 votes.

Lady Justice Henrietta Wolayo upheld his victory and ruled that he has the required academic documents to be a Member of Parliament.

But Walusimbi appealed on grounds that Wakayima had name discrepancies on several documents including the National IDs, Passport, PLE documents among others.

He added that the judge erred in fact and law when she held that Wakayima swore a deed poll which legally made him adopt the academic documents in the name of Musoke Hannington.

The Electoral Commission through its lawyers led by Hamidu Lugoloobi filed an application seeking the court to dismiss the appeal on grounds that it was filed out of the stipulated 14 days that are provided for in law.

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