Mulindwa, the little-known lawyer, makes a stir

It is 7pm on a Thursday and a smartly dressed youthful man emerges from the Sheraton Kampala Health Club.

His confidence is apparent as he inquires whether we were from the Monitor.

Mr Allan Mulindwa has raised controversy in the ongoing prosecution of city businessman Hassan Basajjabalaba after he began a private prosecution at a time when the businessman had snubbed police summonses for the same for more than a year.

He is loud, confident and “bombastic”, flavouring his sentences with use of “big” English words.

Words like, ‘I know’, ‘I am confident’ and ‘I believe’ punctuate his speeches.

He, however, is not willing to reveal his age, saying it would affect his client’s confidence in him. Mulindwa enrolled for the bar course in 2010, thus he has been practising for two years.

In his two years of practice, he counts three cases he has handled in public interest, including that of Basajjabalaba.

The young lawyer also cites a KCCA case, which involved the sale of a hospital on Nkrumah Road.

Mr Mulindwa is the managing partner of Mulindwa and Co Advocates.

Not many of his colleagues in the profession had heard of him until four days ago when the media broke the news of Basajjabalaba’s private prosecution and the Directorate of Public Prosecution came out to confront the integrity of Mr Mulindwa.

The DPP office alleges that Mr Basajjabalaba hired the private prosecutor to help him elude the public prosecution by filing a similar case.
According to Ms Jane Kajuga Akuo, the DPP’s spokesperson, the intention of the private prosecutor remains suspicious and his motives could be investigated.

“We had summoned Basajjabalaba after filing the case last year, then why would a private prosecutor push for a similar case and why the hurried response of the accused if there was no connivance?” Ms Akuo asked.
However, Mr Mulindwa insists he is only trying to have justice served in public interest.

To him it is the loss of confidence in the DPP that motivated him to institute the private prosecution and his first encounter with Basajjabalaba was this week at Buganda Road Court.

“I was not satisfied with the way the DPP handled the Chogm case. They are both political cases and it is well known that the DPP has political interests and thus justice would not be served to the tax payer,” Mr Mulidwa told the Saturday Monitor.

He will not speak of Mr Benard Kakande, who took the complaint on oath against Mr Basajabalaba, since as a lawyer he is mandated to protect his client, who was apparently scheduled as a witness.

Though the DPP has been able to present Basajjabalaba in court, his brother, Muzamiru, has not yet appeared to take plea, a fact that Mulindwa says shows lack of interest in the case and a motive to push for Mr Basajjabalaba’s detention rather than justice.