URN.Court of Appeal Justices comprised of the Deputy Chief Justice Richard Buteera, Hellen Obura and Catherine Bamugemereire on Thursday upheld Walyomu’s victory after dismissing an election appeal filed by his rival Fredrick Munyirwa.
The Court of Appeal has upheld the victory of Moses Walyomu Muwanika as the Kagoma County Member of Parliament in Jinja district.
Court of Appeal Justices comprised of the Deputy Chief Justice Richard Buteera, Hellen Obura and Catherine Bamugemereire on Thursday upheld Walyomu’s victory after dismissing an election appeal filed by his rival Fredrick Munyirwa.
The Electoral Commission declared Walyomu an Independent Candidate as the winner with 7,948 votes and Munyirwa of the National Resistance Movement with 5,048 votes.
Dissatisfied with the results, Munyirwa petitioned the High Court in Jinja seeking orders that Walyomu’s election is nullified and an order for the Electoral Commission to organize and conduct fresh elections on grounds that the election was not conducted in compliance with the electoral laws.
But after filing his petition, Munyirwa filed an application seeking an order within which to serve it to Walyomu and also an order validating the service of the petition having filed it out of the stipulated seven days.
The case was later dismissed with costs by the High Court Judge Joseph Murangira which forced Munyirwa to appeal against his decision.
Walyomu and the Electoral Commission asked the Court of Appeal to dismiss the case on grounds that it offends the rules of the Court and that Munyirwa failed to take essential and necessary steps in filing, serving and prosecuting the appeal adding that it is therefore incompetent and bad in law.
In their Judgement delivered on Thursday, the Justices dismissed Munyirwa ‘s applications and allowed those filed by Walyomu and the Electoral Commission through its lawyer Hamidu Lugoloobi. This is on grounds that the laws are very clear that strict timelines have to be adhered to in the filing of documents in election matters.
The Justices have indicated that the Judgement in Munyirwa’s election petition was delivered on August 30 2021 and he filed a notice of appeal on the same day and also wrote a letter requesting certified copies of the record and the Judgement.
However, they say, Munyirwa instead of filing his Memorandum of Appeal on September 7th, 2021, delayed by three months and filed it on December 2nd 202 which was out of the stipulated seven days of filing it.
According to the Justices, although Munyirwa had argued that they delayed getting a copy of the judgement and certified proceedings to enable them to formulate grounds of appeal and got them on October 14 2021, he still did not file the appeal until December 2021.
The Justices indicated that there was no valid reason furnished for the late filing and therefore he hasn’t advanced sufficient reason to warrant the court’s permission to validate the Memorandum of Appeal and the record of appeal filed out of time.
We conclude that the applicant was keen on pursuing the appeal with the necessary vigour and diligence required in election matters. He without justification did not comply with the law”, said Justices.
They awarded costs to the Electoral Commission and Walyomu.
