Nathan Igeme Nabeta of Jinja East constituency under NRM party has retained his parliamentary seat after the court dismissed a petition challenging his victory filed by his main challenger Paul Mwiru of Alliance for National Transformation (ANT)
Nabeta won the race with 5,621 votes against his closest challenger, Paul Mwiru who got 5,355 votes and challenged the outcome of the polls on grounds that Nabeta connived with Electoral Commission officials to engage in election malpractice.
Mr Mwiru says that the EC manipulated tally sheets to steal his victory and pointed out results from Masese I Polling Station (N-M), which, according to him, were falsified to show that Nabeta got 650 votes out of a voting population of 678 voters who turned up on polling day. He argued that this affected the final outcome in a substantial manner.
Through his lawyer, Peter Walubiri, Mwiru argued that it was impossible for the 678 voters to cast their vote between mid-day when the polling station opened, and 5 pm, when it closed for the directly-elected MPs as it was alleged. They added that if results from the disputed polling station were committed, Mwiru would win the race from the 53 other stations with 5,560 votes against Nabeta’s 5,167 votes, a winning margin of 393 votes.
However, Judge Issa Sserunkuma yesterday dismissed the petition at Jinja high court with costs on grounds that Mwiru failed to adduce substantial evidence to support his claims.
According to Mwiru, his crucial evidence was not considered by the same court, which weakened the merits of the petition.
In 2016 elections, , Mr Mwiru again sued Nabetta and by then was zeroing his submission on only Danida A-D Polling Station in Walukuba-Masese Division, where he successfully proved that the results that were declared there were fraudulent though he was again thrown out of Parliament in 2018.