The Court of Appeal has Friday declared Jinja East constituency seat vacant saying that the incumbent MP, Nathan Igeme Nabeta was wrongly elected.
The three justices of the court of appeal who included Stephen Kavuma, Richard Buteera and Paul Mugamba in their consent judgement read by the Deputy Registrar Tadeo Asiimwe, agreed that non compliance to laws which was proved in the 2016 Jinja Municipality election affected the results.
The justices pointed out that the Returning officer’s failure to open the tamper proof envelope before the tallying of results was erroneous and did not affect only the results of only one polling station but the entire constituency.
They further said that there is no way they could fault the Jinja high court judge for cancelling the results when the Returning officer himself confessed that it was another person who opened the tamper proof envelope.
“Our findings are that the second applicant (Electoral Commission) failed to conduct it’s mandate.The said non compliance had substantial effect to the results of the election and, therefore, the first appeallant was wrongly declared and he is not a validly elected MP of Jinja East,” read the ruling.
Court has subsequently ordered the Electoral Commission to conduct fresh elections as well as Nabeta to pay costs to Mwiru at both High court and appeal level.
Nabeta was declared MP-elect of Jinja Municipality East Constituency following the February 2016 general elections amid reports of electoral irregularities from his main opponent, Paul Mwiru of FDC who was then incumbent.
Tallying at Jinja district Hall had been postponed due to a stand off between supporters of the two camps which prompted deployment of police and the army.
Subsequently, Mwiru filed a petition in the High Court citing irregularities in the declaration of results forms. He claimed that the results forms submitted by Nabeta showed that more people had voted than were present on the forms held by Mwiru and the EC officials.
Mwiru contested the ‘forged’ results from Danida A-D polling station which incicated that Nabeta got 502 votes against his 226 votes claiming that it was instead 187 votes for Nabeta against his 226 votes. He wordered how Nabeta could poll 502 votes yet only 418 voters turned up as seen from the votes obtained by presidential and Woman MP elections.
But High Court dismissed the petition which forced Mwiru to challenge the decision in the Court of Appeal.
Friday’s judgment which was signed by three judges was read by Taddeo Asiimwe, the court registrar.