The court of appeal in Kampala has on Friday morning declared the Jinja Municipality East seat in parliament vacant.
During the February 2016 polls, Nathan Igeme Nabeta was declared winner prompting Forum for Democratic Change’s Paul Mwiru to petition the High Court in Jinja protesting against the results.
The court would then throw out Nabeta and declared Mwiru the validly elected Member of Parliament after the former (Nabeta) was found guilty of interfering with poll results.
Nabeta later appealed the judgment of the High Court in the Court of Appeal.
However in the judgement read by the deputy registrar Tadeo Asiimwe, three judges of the Court of Appeal including Steven Kavuma, Richard Butera and Paul Mugamba ruled that Nabeta was not validly declared winner of the February 2016 polls.
The court in Kampala ruled that at Danida A-D polling station, the Electoral Commission failed in its duties when the tamper proof envelope was opened by another person, other than their returning officer which was irregular.
"This meant that the results were tampered with and cannot be relied on,"Asiimwe read on Friday.
FDC's Paul Mwiru at court on Friday.
The Court of Appeal also ruled that opening of the tamper proof envelope was done at a distance where Mwiru's agents could not clearly observe what was going on, something that seemed suspect.
"With existance of two different declaration forms with different results, one of them was falsified."
"Nabeta was not validly elected Member of Parliament because we find the integrity of the results at Danida A-D community polling station in doubt. "
The three justices of the Court of Appeal declared the seat vacant and ordered for fresh elections.
