Mbabazi petition drama

Mwesigwa Rukutana, the deputy Attorney General, attempted to spring a technicality. The petitioner’s lawyer was reading evidence which the respondents had already put on the record showing that at the time, Feb.20, results from a number of polling stations had not been declared. In total these polling stations totaled 1,787. Kabale, Rukungiri, Jinja, Kyenjojo, Kampala and Wakiso were among the most affected.

But Justice Katureebe over-ruled him. Now was the petitioner’s time, Katureebe said, Rukutana would have time to respond.

Mohmed insisted he was making one point; that the EC had results from these districts at the time they declared Museveni winner but deliberately entered zeros on DR forms to give Museveni an advantage.

Mohmed said: The point my lord is that the tally sheets show how the will of the people was averted.

“The DR is a creature of the constitution and that is where the will of the people is. So when the results on the DR forms are not entered in the system, which is supposed to transmit the results, then the will of the people is averted.”

On Taremwa’s left was an opposition politician, who kept making all sorts of sounds whenever the petitioner’s lawyers revealed something about the EC.

At first, both Rwakojo, who sat in front of him and Taremwa next to him ignored him but as the heat mounted on the EC, Taremwa could not hold it any more. “Can we also be allowed to listen,” he muttered looking at the man visibly angry. The fellow just smiled.

It was now already a half past eleven and Mohmed was getting into the thick of the inconsistencies. He was using EC documents to emphasise his case that the EC had not relied on Declaration of Results (DR) to declare the electoral results as required by the law.

He called it a “calculated scheme to conceal the results on the DR forms” and said it “rhymed with the blockade of social media” and that all was “to block the people from exposing the truth’. He said, therefore, the case is not about numbers of votes because “numbers only apply when dealing with valid votes”.

“In this case the votes are invalid. The mode of voting is invalid and everything out of it is invalid,” he said adding that court should not to pay attention to the numbers declared by Kigundu. If they did, he noted, they would have been “used the way voters were used”.

Mohmed was addressing the so-called “substantiality test” in response to ground two of their petition which emphasizes the numbers.

“Hiding behind the numbers promotes cheating,” he said as he wound up his argument.

Up until this point, Kiggundu’s team appeared unfazed. But that would soon change – when Mohmed called on his colleague, Twinobusingye, to expose more inconsistences and Namugere appeared to flee the court.

The Twinobusingye saga

As Twinobusingye was summing up, Kiryowa Kiwanuka, who represents Museveni, raised a complaint regarding the now famous matrix.

“I have a concern that this matrix is a document that they have made or picked from someone,” he said, “we do not know what its primary data is.”

At this point Justice Katureebe turned to Twinobusingye and asked him to relate the matrix to the documents from which he had generated it. Twinobusingye said the matrix was only related to the DR forms and he could not show court the documents.

“You must have taken this from somewhere,” Katureebe said.

“It was given to us my lord,” Twinobusingye responded.

“Surely Mr. Twinobusingye,” Katureebe said, “when you give us something like this, you now expect us to go and plough into that sea of documents? Bring us what you are relying on.”

“My lords,” Twinobusingye said, “they are making more photocopies.”

“But we want to move with you,” Katureebe said.

At this point, another justice intervened: “If you are not ready with that line of argument, you can go to another one”.

“This is surprising to me Mr. Twinobusingye,” Katureebe said, “surely by the time you came up with this matrix, you were working with primary documents.”

“I can explain,” Twinobusinge muttered, “we got these documents yesterday, then they had to be analysed and we had to make photocopies, none the less, we shall supply them.”

“Where did you get that information?” another judge shot back.

But Twinobusingye attempted to move on.  “When we talk about Kaboijana,” he said, “the primary document is the DR form and the tally sheet posted on the EC website.” The Justices wondered whether he was now relying on the website and not the documents before court.

At this point, Twinobusingye asked for time to get documents and Katureebe adjourned.

Previously, whenever court adjourned, the lawyers and their clients would hang around a bit, share jokes as they moved out. This time around, it was as if court had been invaded by a swarm of bees.

Mbabazi’s lawyers were the first to rush out. Kiggundu and Rwakojo also stormed out after talking to Karugire and Kiryowa.

When they returned, Wamala, the head of Election Management was carrying a stash of documents mostly tally sheets. He sat very fast and started scribbling things on the paper.

Kiwanuka had carried his big rectangular box-shaped leather brief case. It had patches, where the leather coating had peeled off and some of its edges appeared faded. It looked heavy and tilted him on one side until he landed it on the table.

Karugire also entered with a few more bundles of documents. Amid the commotion, something was different. The men who had rushed out appeared calm. Kiggundu was shifting between giggling and laughing.

Throughout the next session, Karugire issued three more dispatches. He would scribble the chits to the EC team. They would write back to him and he would pass some chits to Kiryowa who was seated on the front bench before the justices. One of them was a tally sheet. And on the top left corner of the paper, a handwritten sentence written with a blue pen read; “What is the total number of the registered voters?” Slightly below it was the answer underlined in red; “872”. The document was with Wamala.

When Twinobusingye started presenting, he was reading from a DR form.  He mentioned Nyakariro II a polling station where he alleged there was 100% voter turnout. But he immediately withdrew it.

“Sorry my lords, there was a problem. Let us look at Kisoro, Bunagana Primary School polling station.”

He said this had glaring inconsistences.

At that polling station he cited, there had been 544 counted ballots, 525 votes cast, 550 ballot papers issued, 19 invalid and 300 unused ballots.

“In view of the fact that only 550 papers were issued at this polling station and valid votes cast for candidates is 525, how does one explain the unused that amount to 300?” he said.

He moved to another, DR form III. Gomelo polling station in Nakaseke. This is a case of a 100 percent turnout. Here, he said, valid cast votes were 261, ballots issued 294, counted 268, invalid seven and not used 26. Here, he said Museveni scored 261.

What explanation is given, he asked, for all voters turning up, no one travelling,  and no incident at all for one to be absent?

“Such a situation is spread across the country as shown in my matrix but in the interest of time,” Twinobusingye said, “we cannot go through all of them. It is all left to you your lordships to evaluate.”

Then Twinobusinge moved on to the matrix indicating polling stations where total votes cast exceeded the number of registered voters.

Kaboijana trading centre polling station in Hoima, he said. But that is where it stopped.

His next statement sparked a lot of murmurs in court.

“My lords,” he said, “I would like to leave this matter at that because we couldn’t go through a sea of documents, we got mixed up and I would like to leave that matter at that and invite one of my colleagues to raise another matter or two.”

At this point, Kiryowa shot up. He said they had expected Twinobusingye to bring documents supporting his allegations after the break.

“This is a very serious allegation my lord,” Kiryowa said, “for the counsel to just stand up and say we are done with that, we can go on is not correct.”

“My understanding is that he has put that matrix aside,” the Chief Justice intervened, “we are not looking at it anymore.”

Kiryowa was not done. He said his team had spent two hours going through the polling stations and none showed excesses.

“My lord, the figures on the second matrix are forgeries,” Kiryowa insisted, “Let him show at least one example. It is forgery, it is wrong.”

Katureebe emphasized that that from his understanding the matrix was off the record. But Rukutana joined Kiryowa to insist on the falsity of Twinobusingye’s matrix.

“You allowed the press to cover this matter because you wanted Ugandans to follow what is transpiring,” Rukutana said, “Right now on social media and on radios what is being broadcast is that the petitioner’s lawyers have proved to court that in the elections which took place on the 18th of February, the number of votes cast, exceeded the number of registered voters. That is both here and internationally because I have been talking to people in London who are watching on CNN, on BBC, now counsel comes here, as usual and disowns the alleged document without any apology.”

Katureebe did not baulk.

“I am sure the same media have heard you now,” he said, “I am sure the same media have heard him withdraw the same matrix and I am sure the same media heard Mr. Kiryowa Kiwanuka saying that it is a forgery and we are going to proceed.”

Much obliged, my lord, for the purposes of this court and whoever is listening, Rukutana said amidst cheers in his camp.

When another Mbabazi lawyer, Akampurira showed court a dully filled DR form from a polling station but Kiggundu’s Tally Sheets showed zero results for all candidates, Justice Katureebe asked him who the case favoured.

“It doesn’t favour anybody,” Akampurira said, “it says there are no results and yet the DR form has already showed results. Our argument, which is consistent is that there is no way Kiggundu could have based on DR forms to declare results, which DR forms say something different.”

Other lawyers for the petitioner, Jude Byamukama and Asuman Basalirwa, also made presentations and Kiryowa responded just before Justice Katureebe brought the petition hearing to an end.

He said the justices findings would be revealed on March. 31.

Mohmed waited at the door and shook hands with colleagues.

“Good lawyer, bad case,” one EC official remarked while shaking his hands.

“Ummmmm! Let us wait and see,” Mbabazi responded.

When The Independent asked him how he felt about the case, he looked up, looked at the car that was waiting for him with the door open and said; “It was a good fight” before jumping into the car. Akampurira was at the wheel. They drove off.