Opposition’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) has rubbished Chief Justice Bart Katureebe’s committee investigating corruption in the judiciary.
Last week Katureebe selected six officials to investigate the corruption tendencies within the judiciary and they were was given two months to report back to him since they embarked on the task with immediate effect.
The task force is headed by the Inspector of Courts, Immaculate Busingye, other members include Ayebare Tumwebaze the Assistant Registrar in the office of the chief registrar, Solomon Muyita the senior communications officer, Vincent Emmy Mugabo the registered/ Public Relations Officer, Susan Abinyo Registrar Magistrate Affairs and Data Management and Godfrey Kawesa president of Uganda Judicial Officers Association (UJOA).
However, on Monday while addressing journalists at FDC’s headquarters in Najanankumbi, the party Spokesperson Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda bashed the committee and said that the six selected officials are incapable of digging out facts because they are among the team to be investigated and advised Katureebe to select independent members.
“Judiciary should subject to itself to an external investigation, how will the juniors investigate their seniors.
“If you analyse the list of those selected, almost all of them are junior staffs but Katureebe has tasked them to investigate him and other top senior judicial officials, this is will create mistrust in their report by the public,” said Ssemujju.
The Kira Municipality legislator further advised Katureebe to use independent, experienced and credible people who will attract credit to their report.
Among the people he proposed is Prof. Sylvia Tamale, Prof. Oloka Onyango, Prof. Fredrick Ssempebwa and Prof. Fredrick Juuko. He added that naming junior staff to investigate their seniors is one way of covering up the corruption vice within the judiciary.
Ssemujju also asked Katureebe to concentrate on the efficiency of the judiciary in order to solve the problem of huge case backlog.
“Judiciary’s performance remains a big concern to the nation,” she said.
Currently there are 140 cases pending in Supreme Court which handled only 43 cases the whole of last year. There are 15,628 cases before the Court of Appeal which handled only 598 cases last year. In High court out of 130,000 cases, only 12571 were handled last year, in Magistrate Courts last year only 62,000 were handled out of 183,771.
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