The Constitutional Court has this Thursday morning overturned the decision by parliament to remove Mityana Municipality MP Francis Zaake from the Parliamentary Commission.
The judges also found House Speaker Anita Among to have had a conflict of interest, and for a number of house rules to have been breached in the process of suspending Zaake.
The Mityana MP was unceremoniously dismissed from the Parliamentary Commission in March 2022 for alleged misconduct and misbehavior.
Zaake was accused of using derogatory terms to describe then Deputy Speaker Anitah Among on social media.
But the 5 judges of the Constitutional Court noted that there were less than half of the MPs present in the house when Zaake was voted out of the commission, which is against rule 84(1) of the Rules of Procedure of parliament.
Only 161 MPs were in plenary, out of whom 155 voted to expel Zaake.
The judges, on the other hand, referred to the amendment of the recommendations in the report of the parliamentary committee on Rules privileges, and Discipline to include a recommendation that Zaake be removed from office which the justices say had no basis in the law and was passed in contravention of articles 42 and 44(C) of the Constitution and and Rule 110(5) in Rules of procedure of Parliament.
The MP’s suspension suspension according to the court, compromised the rules of natural justice, Speaker Among acted as a judge in her own cause when she continued chairing parliament on a matter in which she had a personal interest.
It now remains to be seen if Parliament will heed the court’s ruling and reinstate Zaake to the Parliamentary Commission.
