Ex-minister Chebrot loses election petition appeal

Tingey County Member of Parliament (MP) Kenneth Soyekwo had a reason to smile all the way from Twed Tower to the Parliamentary Buildings after the Court of Appeal ruled that he should retain his seat in the House undisturbed, leaving the petitioner, a former minister in the cold.

Former Transport State Minister and MP for the constituency Dr. Stephen Chebrot  Chemoiko had appealed to the Court of Appeal  seeking to overturn a High Court judgment dismissing a petition in which he had sought to annul Soyekwo's election.

Dr. Chebrot had petitioned the court alleging that there were gross irregularities, malpractices, violence, lack of freedom and transparency, disenfranchisement of voters and commission of electoral offences and illegal practices.

He had also accused the EC of failure to control the use of ballot papers, leading to multiple voting, ballot stuffing and manipulation of results, favouring Soyekwo, all of which were denied by the respondents.

Chebrot, Soyekwo and Nasif Wodadada contested for the constituency seat in Parliament. At the conclusion of the exercise, the EC declared Soyekwo the winner of the election with 8469 votes and Chebrot, as runner up polled 8307 votes with a margin of 161 votes.
 
Deputy Justice Steven Kavuma chaired the coram. The other members were Justices Elizabeth Musoke and Paul Kahaibale Mugamba.

Dismissing Chebrot's appeal, the court unanimously ruled; "we accept the trial judge's findings that the appellant's evidence and that of his witnesses on allegations of bribery was hearsay and untenable. In the circumstances we find that the appellant did not prove this allegation of bribery. We find that the evidence adduced by the appellant on this allegation of bribery was weak and was not proved to the required standard."

The court also observed that the allegation of bribery was not pleaded in the petition. Those allegations were raised during the rejoinder to the answer to the petition. Affidavits in rejoinder are essentially for the purposes of giving an opportunity to the petitioner to rejoin to and controvert or dispute the contents of the affidavits in reply by the respondent.

However, the court agreed with High Court judge Andrew Bashaija, who heard Chebrot's petion when he ruled that it was apparent that the appellant had some reasonable cause of action with regard to some of the allegations of non-compliance with electoral laws, although they did not affect the results in a substantial way.                         
                  
The court ordered the appellant is to recover a third of the costs of the appeal from EC. Soyekwo shall recover two thirds of the costs of appeal of which a third is to be recovered from appellant (Chebrot) and; a third from EC.

It was also ordered that Soyekwo shall recover two thirds of the costs in the High court jointly and severally from both the appellant (Chebrot) and the EC.                          ENDS