The National Unity Platform has filed petition at the Constitutional Court of appeal challenging the recently passed UPDF Amendment Act which took back civilians to military courts.
The Leader of Opposition in Parliament Joel Ssenyonyi, while addressing journalists at the constitutional court on Wednesday said in passing the law, Parliament abused the rules of procedure provided for in the constitution.
“For Parliament to pass a law to try and do away with a decision of court goes against the constitution Article 92, that’s one, secondly, in passing any law, it’s got to be consultative…. This law wasn’t consultative, the first reading was today, then invitations went out that very day saying all stakeholders come tomorrow morning and no one will be accepted beyond that day, you don’t do that, if the law is good” he noted.
Ssenyonyi further said the law was passed without quorum in Parliament following the opposition members walking out of Parliament due to poor mobilization of NRM MP’s during the passing of the Act.
NUP’s Secretary General David Lewis Rubongoya revealed that the petition which is seeking for the nullification of the Act is against the Attorney General of Uganda Kiryowa Kiwanuka, Speaker Anita Among and Jacob Oboth Oboth, the minister for defence and veteran affairs.
“We are praying that the amendment is nullified by the constitutional court which has powers to do so, we have raised both substantive issues and procedural issues,”
“They violated all the processes that they should follow while passing laws, you remember for example as a Secretary General of a major political party, I received that letter inviting me to the committee at 8:41am and I was expected to be in the committee at 9am with the memorandum prepared to serve to the committee” he said.
Rubongoya noted that in enacting that law, parliament didn’t follow the procedures and substantive issues.
“The Supreme Court was very categorical that civilians have no role being tried in military courts, but the parliament went ahead after Gen Museveni issued money to members of parliament, which issues we are raising in this petition”.
Rubongoya added, “We want the constitutional court to issue a permanent injunction against the trial of civilians in military courts, the National Unity Platform has suffered a lot under the arms of the military courts, as we speak now, we still have our comrades, today we are here with Mama Machete whose son has been in detention for more than four years now on the orders of that Kangaroo military court. We are here with Olivia Lutaaya, we all know the time she spent under detention until she was coerced into pleading guilty to crimes she didn’t commit including Rugumayo here and others”.
