By Charles Katabalwa
16th Oct 2023
Jimmy Akena, the President of the Uganda People’s Congress-UPC party has insisted on continuing to serve as party president despite court nullifying his presidency.
While addressing journalists at UPC headquarters at Uganda House in Kampala, Akena said that those challenging his presidency are just self seekers who have never done anything tangible for the UPC instead want to demolish it.
He says that he is not ready to quit his position in UPC to people he calls self-seekers hence calling upon party members to desist from the diversions but to focus on the forthcoming national Local Council elections.
Akena, who is also the Lira Municipality Member of Parliament, suffered another defeat after the Supreme Court struck down an application that sought to stay the Court of Appeal orders that nullified Akena’s elections.
In a unanimous decision Supreme Court Justices; Alphonse Owiny-Dollo, Faith Mwondha, Lilian Tibatemwa-Ekirikubinza, Percy Tuhaise, and Mike Chibita, held that the Akena faction had no right to appeal an interlocutory decision of the Court of Appeal in the Supreme Court without first seeking leave of the same court.
In their application, which had Prof. John Kakonge as the respondent after the passing of Joseph Bbosa, the former vice president of UPC, the Akena faction argued that the decision of the Court of Appeal that froze the party bank accounts had an immediate impact on the operations of the party ahead of the 2016 general election.
In 2015, Joseph Bbosa, Prof. Kakonge, and Otto Amiza filed an application for Judicial Review in the High Court against UPC and its Electoral Commission challenging the election of Akena as the Party’s President-elect as being illegal and the election being full of malpractices.
High Court Judge Yasin Nyanzi held in favor of the Bbosa group by declaring the election of Akena void and illegal for violating the UPC Constitution.
This forced the Akena group to run to the Court of Appeal and appeal the matter.
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