A tenacious Kampala International University (KIU) student who intends to contest as an MP for Busiro South Constituency in 2016 has dragged the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party to court seeking to quash its recently-enacted NRM Primary Elections Regulations 2015 which have caused consternation throughout the country.
The student wants court to compel NRM to allow all interested aspirants to to contest in its primaries without paying nomination fees.
James Okori, a law student at KIU says the contested guidelines violate human rights, mirror no respect for the rule of law, are very restrictive and neither do they augur well with Uganda’s nascent democracy.
According to the recently announced NRM primaries election regulations 2015, aspirants who wish to contest for leadership positions in the 2016 general elections on the NRM ticket are required to pay fees ranging from UGX 10,000/= in case of an LCI contestant to UGX 10M for presidential aspirants. For Mr. Okori’s case as an MP aspirant, he has to pay UGX 2,000,000M on top of which he is required to pay another UGX 540,000/= to have his academic documents verified.
The student avers that the fees are simply too restrictive and if Court does not restrain NRM from collecting them, the party will have succeeded in subverting the growth of democracy.
The aspirants can only access the said guidelines as well as nomination forms after paying the fees in the bank, something that caused an uproar last week when a prominent NRM stalwart refused to pick the forms as had been widely anticipated, reasoning that he could not pay for what he had not seen.
On top of that, the guidelines indicate that aspirants who contest and lose out on the position of NRM flag bearer for a particular post will not be allowed to stand as independent canditates, with stringent punishment lined up for any member who obstinately refuses to tow the line.
Premised on the above situation, Mr. Okori opines that the regulations are too onerous for aspirants without a significant financial muscle to comply with and as such they deprive of voters and their candidates the right to freely participate in political processes of the country.
As a result, the KIU student has also filed an urgent interim application asking for an urgent interim order of injunction restraining NRM from excluding him or any other registered aspirant who has not paid nomination fees from picking nomunation forms or contesting in its primaries and an interim order of mandamus compelling NRM to gazette the regulations, pending the hearing of the main suit.
In the main case, the student further seeks an order of prohibition barring NRM from implementing the contested guudelines, a declaration that payment of nomination fees in any party by aspiring candidates is not mandatory, and an order of mandamus compelling NRM to allow all interested aspirants to contest in the NRM primaries without paying the exhorbitant fees.
Mr. Okori also prays for a court order compelling NRM to refund the nomination fees already collected from aspirants and a declaration that neither NRM nor any other political party or organisation has the power to restrain from contesting as an independent any member who has contested and lost in its primaries.
Reacting to today’s headline on one of the newspapers saying that NRM had revised the guidelines, Mr. Okori’s lawyer Isaac K. Ssemakadde of Centre for Legal Aid says the headline is just hogwash and merely intended to calm down the tension. “When you read the body of the story, it is very contradictory. Its like the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. NRM is still justifying the unjustifiable.”
Provided that court allows the Applicant’s prayers, it will be interesting to observe how NRM reacts to the ruling, since a major NRM figure, Mr. Ofwono Opondo was quoted as saying that NRM does not conduct its business through lawyers.
Details of the dates on which the case is to be heard will be communicated soon.
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