By Spy Uganda
Kampala: High Court in Kampala has postponed the judgment ruling in a case where two-party members are challenging the change and transfer of leadership of the National Unity Reconciliation and Development Party(NURP) to Presidential hopeful Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine without the right authorization by other members of the party.
In August, Basile Difas and Hassan Twaha dragged 11 people to court for changing the party leadership without authorization to Kyagulanyi and the name was changed to the National Unity Platform and Kibalama swore an affidavit defending the process of changing the party leadership.
Justice Musa Ssekaana of the Civil Division of the High Court in Kampala was set to deliver the judgment on the case this Friday 16 October but according to the judiciary spokesperson, Jameson Karemani, the judgment has been postponed due to unforeseen circumstances and will now be delivered next week and the day is yet to be communicated
“Be informed that the NUP judgment will not be there today but on some other day next week to be communicated to you,” Karemani said in a statement on Friday morning.
Bobi Wine was jointly sued with the Electoral Commission, Attorney General, former National Unity Reconciliation and Development Party (NURP) president Moses Nkonge Kibalama, NUP leaders David Lewis Rubongoya, Aisha Kabanda, Joel Ssenyonyi, Flavia Kalule Nabagabe, Fred Nyanzi Ssentamu and Paul Ssimbwa Kagombe.
The two petitioners claim that NURP was gazetted as a political party in Uganda on December 13, 2004, and issued a certificate of registration on December 28, 2004, and that in 2019, without any right and in breach of the party constitution, Kibalama and the Electoral Commission illegally changed its party name to NUP and on July 14, 2020, handed over its leadership to Kyagulanyi and Kagombe.
The duo also said that handing over of the leadership to Kyagulanyi following an illegal extraordinary delegates conference attended by only 51 members during the Coronavirus lockdown was illegal.
The NURP party members want the court to declare that it was illegal for Kibalama to hand over leadership to Kyagulanyi and also want the court to issue an order to declare all changes illegal and the party returned to the rightful members.
Kibalama swore an affidavit defending the move to change the leadership of the party but he later swore another affidavit making a u-turn and told the court that he signed the first affidavit without first reading through its contents and that he was only given the last page and asked to append his signature adding that he was in a hurry travelling to Kayunga when he was asked to sign the first affidavit and that he didn’t go through papers to check the contents.
“They never gave me the document to read through to find out what was contained in. I did this because, in politics, there was a need to file records in the Electoral Commission. We had to beat the deadline,” Kibalama said during cross-examination.
