Lawyers Want NRM Declared Illegal

City Lawyers have petitioned Court calling for the dissolution of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, claiming it’s operating illegally.

While speaking to Red Pepper on Thursday, one of the petitioners, Musiimenta Modern Karema said that the unconstitutionality of the NRM is so open that the contraventions cited in the petition do not require interpretation but mere comparison.

The constitutional Court has refused to fix a date for hearing of our petition. It is obvious that once it is declared that the NRM party constitution is not in tandem with provisions of the national constitution, then, the party will be declared unconstitutional” said Karema.

Karema decried the delay yet some other petitions that were filed after have already been disposed of or are due for judgment, citing the one lodged by Saleh Kamba against the four ‘rebel’ MPs, Theodore Sekikubo, Wilfred Nuwagaba, Barnabas Tinkasiimire and Muhammed Nsereko.

In a letter dated May 30, 2013, the petitioners; Urban Paddy Banturaki and Karema wrote to the Deputy Chief Justice, Stephen Kavuma who also heads the Constitutional Court about the gymnastics involved in listening to the NRM case on the expulsion of the rebel MPs from parliament before listening to this petition.

Karema argued that their petition should have been heard first because a ruling in the petition against the expulsion of the rebel MPs from parliament would be vacated if court rules in their favor.

Find details of this story in today’s print edition of the Red Pepper.