By Andrew Irumba
All land grabbers in Uganda are in for a big kill after the court of Appeal upheld a High Court decision that trimmed Justice Catherine Bamugemereire’s Commission, which was mandated by president Yoweri Museveni to investigate and hear all land wrangles in the coutnry.
It all started on November 30, 2018, when the head of the Land Division of the High Court, Justice Andrew Bashaija, ruled that the Justice Bamugemereire Land Commission should desisit from interfering with court orders or decisions on land matters that have already been concluded through a court process.
However, since the Commission was not satisfied with the ruling, the Attorney General William Byaruhanga, on behalf of the land probe team, appealed before the Court of Appeal.
The Bamugemereire Commission had reasoned that the High Court orders appeared to have intended to circumvent its work which was sanctioned by President Museveni.
But the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court decision, something that is likely to leave many land grabbers with thelast laugh, and affected people suffering double affliction.
Bamugereire and her Probe team were dealt a last blow when Court of Appeal justices Kenneth Kakuru, Stephen Musota and Christopher Madrama, in a judgment delivered on April 17, held that judgments of the court cannot be stayed, reviewed or otherwise compromised by orders issued by the Executive.
While watering down her arguments that the Commission’s work had been sanction by a Presidential directive, the justices observed that allowing the same would result in conflict between the Executive and the Judiciary.
“Accordingly, any executive order or directive that has the effect of staying, reversing or otherwise altering a decision of court is null and void. Allowing this application would revive the order of the Commission of Inquiry on Land Matters, which has the effect of staying a judgment of the High Court,” ruled the justices.
They added that “We find that the orders sought to be stayed are not capable of being executed and we decline to grant them. We re-affirm the independence of the Judiciary by stating that orders issued by the Executive, however well-intended, cannot legally stay decisions of any court of law. We, therefore, find no merit in this application and we dismiss it with costs.”
This however spells doom for several people who had filed complaints of land evictions with the Commission, because it means Justice Bamugereire and her Land Probe Team are nothing but a pack of ‘toothless dogs’ that cannot bite land grabbers anymore.
