A panel of three constitutional court justices headed by Justice Kenneth Kakuru, Justice Egonda Ntende, and Elizabeth Musoke has this morning ruled that they have no jurisdiction to hear any application for interim and temporally orders.
The justices also specifically nullified all orders of injunction, interim or temporary arising out of constitutional petitions still pending in the court, and ordered that all the files be taken back to the registrar to be fixed before a full bench of five Justices.
The development comes after the three Justices discovered that only a full of five Justices have powers to hear dispose of interim and temporally injunctions, centrally to the past instances where one Justice was eligible to hear and rule on an interim application, while three Justices would hear and rule on a temporally injunction, before the case was heard by five judges.
The issue came up this morning in a case where lawyers from Asingwire and partners lawyers filed two applications in the constitutional court, Interim and temporary asking court stay proceedings of the anti-corruption court and the IGG to prosecute six employees of the Jinja district Land Board.
According to the case file, Mrisho Safi & 5 were dragged to the anti-corruption court by office of the Attorney General and Inspector General of Government for allegedly issuing a fake land title to a client.
IGG indicates that the suspects, also district land board employees erred in processing the land title belonging to a one Nantambala Joyce.
Today’s ruling means that the Anti-corruption court may go ahead and prosecute the suspects, while all other Ugandans with pending orders which were initially heard by the panel of three judges have to file fresh applications with the Constitutional court registrar, for hearing before a full panel of five justices.