Petitioner wants judge off age-limit case, alleges she had affair with deputy attorney general

Male Mabirizi Kiwanuka, one of the petitioners in the age limit cases has written to lady justice Elizabeth Musoke of the Constitutional Court requesting that she excuses herself from the age limit case because she is conflicted.

The Deputy Chief Justice Alphonse Owinyi-Dollo on Tuesday named a panel of five Constitutional Court justices including Elizabeth Musoke to preside over hearing of the age-limit petitions set to be held in Mbale early next month.

However in a petition,  Mabirizi alleges that Musoke should stand down because she has a personal relationship with the attorney general Mwesigwa Rukutana who is government's legal representative in the case.

“You sired a child with Hon.Mwesigwa Rukutana, the current Deputy Attorney General who is heading the respondent’s legal team and two children with Hilary Onek who is the current minister of General Duties and voted in favour of the constitutional amendment bill,” Mabirizi writes in a letter dated March 23.

“With the above, it is clear that when you decide to preside over the petition, you will be receiving submissions from the father of your children and also at the same time you will be hearing a case in which another father of your two children is highly interested.”

He also cites the judicial ethics for Ugandans judges established in 2003 that emphasise that a judge must be impartial at all times while dispensing justice.

“A judicial officer shall refrain from participating in any proceedings in which the impartiality of the said officer might reasonably be questioned.”

He says that proceedings in the matter will be null and void if Justice Musoke is part of the panel of judges.

Mabirizi has copied the letter to all the other judges on the panel to hear the age limit petitions, Attorney General and all lawyers representing other parties in the petition.

Judiciary responds

However, according to Solomon Muyita, the judiciary publicist, Mabirizi used a wrong channel to communicate his grievance against Musoke concerning the matter.

“It is the right of any petitioner to ask a judge to excuse themselves from a matter when they feel justice will not be served but he used wrong procedure,”Muyita told the Nile Post in a phone interview on Wednesday.

“He is a lawyer who knows that it is done in court and not through letter.It also enables the judge to defend themselves. Did he want the judge to also respond him through a letter as he did? What he did was contempt of court and abuse of the court process.”

Last week, the Deputy Chief Justice announced that the five petitions filed by the Uganda Law Society (ULS), six opposition MPs , lawyer, Male Mabirizi, Dr.Abed Bwanika and Prosper Busingye,a concerned citizen from Western Uganda had been merged into one.

He later announced that hearing had been transferred to Mbale and that it would be done in a marathon style but this didn’t not go well with the petitioners who complained of the long distance and inconvenience. Hearing of the case starts on April 9.