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Mwiru poll petition ruling set for today
The petitioner: Mr Paul Mwiru at Jinja High Court recently. PHOTOS/ TAUSI NAKATO
What you need to know:
- This is the fourth time Mr Mwiru has sued Mr Nabeta over lack of academic qualifications and falsification of results.
- Mr Mwiru accuses the Electoral Commission (EC) and Mr Nabeta of conniving to deny him victory in the January polls
The ruling in an election petition in which Mr Paul Mwiru of the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) is challenging Jinja Southern Division East Constituency MP, Mr Nathan Igeme Nabeta’s victory is slated for today at Jinja High Court.
Presiding Judge, Justice Isa Sserunkuma, last week said he will deliver his ruling today after Mr Mwiru and Mr Nabeta, through their lawyers, filed their submissions.
In his petition filed in March, Mr Mwiru accused the Electoral Commission (EC) and Mr Nabeta of conniving to deny him victory in the January polls.
According to Mr Mwiru, the EC allegedly connived with Mr Nabeta to exaggerate the results at Masese I Polling Station (N-M) by reportedly using violence and subsequently falsifying the results, thereby affecting the final outcome in a substantial manner.
According to one of the Declarations of Results (DR) forms exhibited before the court, Masese I Polling Station has 798 voters and of these, Mr Nabeta earned 650 votes, while Mr Mwiru garnered 20 votes.
Mr Mwiru, through one of his lawyers, Mr Peter Walubiri, said the declaration of Mr Nabeta was based on falsified results of Masese I Polling Station.
“The final results covered 54 Polling Stations, including the disputed ones; if you tally the other 53 (Polling Stations) and exclude the disputed one, the petitioner (Mwiru) gets 5,560 votes, while the First Respondent (Nabeta) gets 5,167 votes; the petitioner (Mwiru) will have a winning margin of 393 votes,’’ he said.
According to Mr Mwiru’s lawyers, it was impossible for the 678 voters to cast their vote between mid-day and 5pm for the directly-elected MPs as it was alleged.
“It would mean that each voter will have less than a minute to line up, check his/her name in the register, be given three ballot papers, go and tick, fold it and put it in the ballot box - all in 44 seconds. Voters at this polling station were inflated by over 300 voters.
Jinja Southern Division East Constituency MP, Mr Nathan Igeme Nabeta
“Mr Nabeta and the EC failed to present credible forms because the one that was certified by the EC was signed, not by the gazzetted presiding officer, but by somebody else,” Mr Mwiru's legal team submitted.
Mr Mwiru’s team further alleged that ‘armed men’ stormed the Polling Station and forced two of his agents to append signatures on the fake DR forms at gunpoint.
Mr Mwiru wants Court to nullify results from the disputed Polling Station and declare him winner and the duly elected MP because he allegedly won the rest of the Polling Stations.
Mr Nabeta, however, through his lawyer Mr Ahmed Kalule, also contends that he won elections in the 54 Polling Stations.
“The dispute is on only one Polling Station, while 53 have no disputes. All the DR forms from all the Polling Stations were signed by his (Mwiru) agents.
"In his affidavits, he accepts that they were signed, but by force; those are allegations because no one made his agents to sign under duress. When you count all the votes in the constituency, he was defeated,” Mr Nabeta's legal team hit back.
This is the fourth time Mr Mwiru has sued Mr Nabeta over lack of academic qualifications and falsification of results.
In the first suit, the Court ruled in Mr Mwiru's favour and nullified Mr Nabeta's victory.
But in another suit, the Court ruled in Mr Nabeta's favour after he received clearance from the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) and contested in the defunct Jinja East Parliamentary by-election, but lost to Mr Mwiru.
On July 18, 2016, Mr Mwiru again sued, this time zeroing his submission on only Danida A-D Polling Station in Walukuba-Masese Division, where he successfully proved that the results that were declared there were fraudulent. He was again thrown out of Parliament in 2018.
