Prime
Akena loses bid to access UPC bank accounts
KAMPALA- The Supreme Court has rejected the request by Mr James Michael Akena to halt orders of the Court of Appeal, which stopped him from controlling bank accounts of the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) party.
In a September 30 ruling, Justice Mike Chibita held that the orders sought to be stayed by the Akena UPC faction are non-existent as they were time-barred.
“This application indeed arises from Supreme Court civil application No.s 20 of 2020 of the Supreme Court. It was filed pending the outcome of civil appeal no. 20 of 2016…..the condition precedent upon which those orders tagged has elapsed. The orders sought to be stayed are, in effect, non-existent,” Justice Chibita ruled.
He added that if an application for an interim order of stay of execution is to succeed, it must show that a substantive supplication is pending.
“This is trite law. The basis for the instant application is no longer pertaining; this means that there is no legal and factual basis for the application. The ground upon which the application was made shifted and it has no more leg to stand on,” Justice Chibita said.
“The application has been rendered nugatory. It is moot and academic. That being the case, the application must collapse. There is no need of delving into the merits of whether the application is properly before this court. In the result, I would dismiss the instant application with no order as to costs,” he added.
Mr Akena’s UPC faction had run to the Supreme Court, seeking an injunction to restrain their bankers, Orient Bank, from implementing the July 29 decision of the Court of Appeal until the final determination of their appeal was concluded.
The Court of Appeal had stopped Mr Akena’s faction from accessing the party’s accounts in the bank and holding the party delegates conference.
