Judiciary takes heat for delayed parliamentary petitions

Lawmakers sitting on the legal and parliamentary affairs committee of parliament earlier today tasked judiciary's top echelon to explain its taking ‘too' long to dispose election petitions.

Committee chairperson, Oboth-Oboth, shadow attorney general, Wilfred Niwagaba and opposition chief whip, Ssemujju Nganda told judiciary technocrats led by permanent secretary, Kagole Kivumbi, how delayed Court of Appeal delaying to dispose of cases has spawned a ripple of murmurs against impartiality of the judiciary.

"Election petitions are a public interest matter. There is speculation that these petitions are being delayed deliberately and you know what the public thinks is the reason," Oboth-Oboth said.

The Chief Registrar of Court, Paul Gadenya, revealed that a practice direction requiring all judgments pending for the last 60 days to be delivered before 31^st May, 2017 is in the offing.

Following the 2016 February parliamentary elections, over 120 were listed for hearing. In order to help courts expeditiously dispose of elections petitions, former Chief Justice, Benjamin Odoki, issued a practice direction to that obliges courts of judicature to give priority to election petitions after every election cycle.

The rationale of the practice directive was to prevent individuals who should not be in parliament over reasons ranging from electoral malpractices or lack of requisite academic qualifications from hanging around as the unwieldy wheels of litigations trundle on.

Majority of these petitions have ended up at the Court of Appeal after aggrieved litigants decided to challenge High Court decisions.

However, Court of Appeal is yet to dispose of majority of election petitions - leaving many litigants kicking their heels