By Andrew Irumba
There is a lot of tension in Parliament currently after the Constitutional Court nullified the election of six Members of Parliament on grounds that they Contested for non-existing vacancies .
The affected legislators are from the newly created municipalities of Bugiri, Apac, Nebbi , Kotido, Ibanda and Sheema; and notably among these are Asuman Basalirwa of Bugiri Municiplaity , and Minister Elioda Tumwesigye for Sheema .
The ruling was made by 5 justices including ; DCJ Alphonse Owiny-Dollo, Kenneth Kakuru, Cheborion Barishaki, Fredrick Engonda- Ntende and Christopher Madrama, who passed a unanimous agreement with the petitioner and a concerned citizen Eddie Kwizera, that the election of the 6 MPs before the dissolution of the existing Parliamnet was null and void.
The justices reasoned that the election of the 6 MPs cannot stand because they offered themselves to contest for constituencies whose  administrative units, villages or cells had not yet been demarcated by the Electoral Commission as the law states, that such constituencies created by division of others takes effect in the next general election.
The Court explained that much as Parliament has the power to divide Uganda into so many constituencies and the Electoral Commission is charged with a duty to ensure that each constituency is represented in parliament, this can only be done during a General Election or in a case of a by -election after the speaker of Parliament announces an existing vacancy.
To buttress their ruling , the justices further explained that there were representatives already  elected  during the 2016 general elections before the new municipalities were curved out  and that in any case, the Electoral Commission ought to have waited for the 2021 General elections to get representatives for the new municipalities created in August 2018.
The Electoral Commission has been faulted and condemned to pay half of the total costs of the suit to Kwizera for causing an inconvenience to innocent people (six affected MPs) by making them leave whatever they had to do and also incur costs for taking part in unlawful elections and contest for non-existing vacancies.”
