Makerere University late yesterday evening entered into a consent agreement with Bala David, one of the students who had been struck off the list of eligible candidates for the Muk Guild Presidential elections on account of academic shortcomings. The agreement was to put the candidate back on the nominees’ list for guild presidency on condition that he withdraw the suit he had taken to the High Court against the institution and also bear his own costs.
At around 6: 50pm, Mr. Bala signed the consent agreement in the presence of his lawyer and some of his die-hard supporters inside the Dean’s office at the Senate Building. Also in attendance was the Dean, Mr. Kabagambe Cyriaco, University lawyers and this reporter. Rowdy students outside kept University staff inside the building on tenterhooks, threatening to lynch the Dean if Mr. Bala gets out of the meeting without an agreement that allows him to campaign. At one point they disconnected the printer that was being used to process the consent agreement, something that set back the signing occasion until Bala went outside briefly to calm down their boiling blood.
The University got a panic attack after Mr. Bala enlisted the services of one of the country’s best education lawyers from the Centre for Legal Aid who took matters to courts of law, challenging among others the legitimacy of the Makerere Electoral Commission, the students’ Guild Constitution as well as the question of what really constitutes “Normal Progress”. Bala had been disqualified on account of not being on normal progress although he comically insisted that the whole university is not on normal progress.
The University Dean had spent the entire day making frantic calls to Bala’s camp and his lawyer, inviting them to go and iron things out amicably, until late in the evening when the deal was struck. Bala came out of the meeting and was joyously received by hundreds of his supporters who had abandoned a nearby campaign rally.
The Dean, Mr. Kabagambe noted that it is such moments that help the University to know where it is going wrong and invited the students to always engage the University so that they can settle issues amicably.
Bala was not immediately available for a comment since after the signing he rushed to join his unsettled crowd of supporters who marched away into the night chanting “The Tiger is Back!”
Sources privy to the agreement noted that it saved the University a lot of money that it would have had to pay its lawyers to defend it in court, on top of having to pay the candidate for damages and redo the entire process of nominating candidates again in the event that it had lost the court suit Bala had brought against it.
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