Former presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu together with his party-National Unity Platform (NUP) may dearly to challenge the 2021 presidential elections outcomes in Courts of law.
Last Saturday, the Electoral Commission Chairperson Justice Simon Byabakama declared the Pesident Yoweri Museveni winner of the presidential election after beating his closest challenger Bobi Wine.
The former Kyadondo East Member of parliament garnered 34.83 per cent against Museveni’s 58.64 per cent. The race had nine other candidates, including Eng. Patrick Amuriat of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), who became third with 3.24 per cent of the total vote.
After the declaration of the results, Bobi Wine went on his social media channels and posted a message that seemed to many that also NUP might do what FDC’s Kizza Besigye and Amama Mbabazi did when they went to the Supreme Court and challenged the presidential election results that saw Museveni declared winner in 2001, 2006 and 2016 general elections.
“I take this painful, but inevitable leadership decision of urging you to desist from any form of violence as we prepare to challenge the election outcome and its glaring imperfections through the courts of law for the sake of our long-term victory and for Uganda,” Bobi Wine posted on Sunday.
However, according to NUP spokesperson also Nakawa West Member of Parliament elect Joel Ssenyonyi, plans of running to court are not yet on table. Ssenyonyi told this website on Tuesday that the party has not yet decided to go to the Supreme Court given the fact their principal Bobi Wine is still under house arrest.
“We have not said we are going to court over the election results. None of us has said that. The issue we said we are going to court over is the illegal detention of Kyagulanyi at his home. We want to get a court order declaring the acts of the military of holding him under house arrest illegal,” he said.
Ssenyonyi added that currently, they are concentrating on collecting evidence that will justify that EC’s results were not real. He said that the purpose of collecting the Declaration Forms is to show the entire world how elections were rigged.
“The idea is to gather documents and let the world know what happened. We do not necessarily have to go to Gen Museveni’s court here which we know will just legitimise his win. It could be in the court of public opinion or other avenues. We want to use avenues which work when we have gathered all the evidence,” he said.
He further noted that It is important that people first see that there was a fraud and see how Justice Byabakama announced fake results.
“We must have a declaration of results forms indicating otherwise. You cannot tell people you won and you don’t show evidence. When we show evidence, we will tell you our next move,” he added.
Uganda’s electoral law alludes that incase anyone who alleges malpractices and seeks the nullification of the result of a presidential election or any political post, he or she must prove that the irregularities concretely affected the result and this must be done earlier before the declared winner swears in.
In case NUP also goes to the Supreme Court, this will be the fourth time best losers in presidential elections contest Gen Museveni’s victory since the 2001 general elections.
The first and second petitions were file by Dr Kizza Besigye (FDC) in 2001 and 2006 respectively, the third was by the former prime minister Ammama Mbabazi in 2016, all the three were seeking cancellation of Museveni’s re-election however in all of them the Supreme Court ruled in favour of President Museveni.
In all the three elections petitions, most of the Supreme Court judges agreed to the arguments of irregularities as cited in petitions, however, they refused to nullify the results alluding that there were not significant and they could not make any difference on the results initially announced.
In Africa, they are only two Supreme courts that have raised the bar when they nullified results of presidential elections. The first was in Kenya in 2017 where the re-election of an incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta was nullified due to irregulates. Elections were held again, fortunately, he emerged as a winner again.
The second was in Malawi in 2020 when their constitutional court together with the Supreme Court nullified the re-election of Peter Mutharika citing many irregularities. Elections were re-held, unfortunately, Mutharika lost to Lazarus Chakwera who is now the current president.
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