Nabeta Nathan was declared winner of the Jinja east Member of Parliament seat during the 2016 elections which his competitor Paul Mwiru disagreed with forcing him to petition the High Court in Jinja opposing the results.
Due to this, the court had opted to replace Nabeta with Mwiru something that caused Nabeta to appeal to the High court in the court of Appeal.
However, the three judges at the court of Appeal, Steven Kavuma, Richard Butera and Paul Mugamba have declared the post of Jinja East vacant and have asked for a fresh election because the electoral exercise was suspicious which makes Nabeta an invalid winner of the 2016 polls.
“At Danida A-D polling station, the Electoral Commission failed in its duties when the tamper proof envelope was opened by another person, other than their returning officer which was irregular which implies that the results were tampered with and cannot be trusted,” ruled the court of appeal.
The Court of Appeal also ruled that it was suspicious to open the tamper proof at a distance something that made it inevitable for Mwiru’s agents to observe what was going on.
“With existence of two different declaration forms with different results, one of them was falsified.”
“Nabeta was not validly elected Member of Parliament because we find the integrity of the results at Danida A-D community polling station in doubt and the existence of two different declaration forms with different results implies that one of the forms is false.”
The three justices of the Court of Appeal have asked the Electoral commission to organize fresh elections.
