A commentary on the Supreme Court judgment on age limit Bill

April 18 was billed as the day when the long-awaited judgment of the Supreme Court would be delivered to decide the future of governance of Uganda for generations.
The country eagerly watched or listened to its reading all day with intermittent applauds and groans. The applauds were for the three courageous justices who allowed the appeal and nullified the Bill which had been enacted illegally to allow teenagers and over 80-year-old candidates to stand for the presidency.

The groans, lamentations and weeping were caused by the incomprehensible and embarrassing reasons and decisions of four justices who dismissed the appeal in a partisan fashion.
They exhibited naked bias and cowardly disregard of Ugandans’ rights, problems and aspirations.
They indulged in an orgy of contemptuous indifference to the principals of democracy, rule of law and constitutionalism.

Two of them, including former officials of the ruling NRM party, reasoned as if they are still serving the party and its leadership and not the sovereign Republic of Uganda.
They betrayed their judicial oath and why Parliament and the people of Uganda had vested them with powers and functions of adjudicating fairly and protecting the weak from wrong behaviour in society.
Since the coming into force of the 1995 Constitution, Ugandan courts and judges have handed down hundreds of judgments and rulings which should be, together with the Constitution, the only binding authorities used by Uganda’s courts.

However, some of the politically charged judges were inspired by the brotherhood of pan-Africanism and recited African or foreign jurisdiction cases to justify their peculiar behaviour.
One of the absurd incidents warmly embraced by the judges was the chaos that raged in the chambers of Parliament and forced the NRM party cadres and Speaker to invite security and the military to beat up and forcefully remove any MP who was known or seen to be opposing the age limit Bill.
The Speaker should have, as any other speaker in a democratic and free parliament, suspended the sitting. Instead, the Speaker allowed the controversial Bill to be processed and passed while those who opposed it were either in hospital or detained.

It is absurd that any self-respecting and impartial judge would give a stamp of approval to a law passed during physical battles which needed the government to declare an emergency.
Finally, the opponents of the Bill had argued that the people countrywide had not been consulted or had not consented to the Bill, which they saw as undermining the Constitution.

It will be recalled also that not only MPs but the media and civil society had done this exercise themselves and found that the overwhelming majority of Ugandans did not want their Constitution to be ‘touched’.
Ultimately, the four judges who dismissed the appeal ignored this fact and then politically and in a partisan manner gave the reason citing one or two Members of Parliament of the same ilk who had falsely sworn affidavit that they had consulted the people in their constituencies without revealing those they consulted.
It should have been the evidence of support rather than the mere casual visit to the constituencies that should have been what convinced the judges. Instead, they betrayed the nation and their oath with a hollow and partisan majority opinion.
Next week we shall continue with the concept and meaning of justice.

Prof Kanyeihamba is a retired Supreme Court judge.
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