By John Ogulei
SOROTI CITY
The Soroti Chief Magistrate court on Friday 29th January 2021 dismissed with costs three election applications that were filed by three different candidates.
The cases included one filed by Independent Gweri County MP loser, Kenneth Esiangu Etunganane against Electoral Commission and FDC’s Tom Julius Ekudo
The second petition was filed by Kapelebyong County incumbent MP, Julius Ochen against Electoral Commission and NRM’s Anthony Esenu and the third was filed by independent Soroti County MP, loser Eninu Samuel against Electoral Commission and NRM’s Edyangu Aeku.
In their different court applications, all applicants wanted court to order for a vote recount citing irregularities during the process of vote tallying.
In his application filed at Soroti Magistrates court through his lawyers, Kenneth Esiangu who lost to Ekudo in the recently concluded 14th January 2021 polls for instance contends that there was a lot of ballot stuffing that marred the electoral process and asked court to conduct a parallel vote recount in order to ascertain the actual winner of the polls.
Esiangu also filed 14 other affidavits to support his earlier applications which were both quashed by the Soroti Chief Magistrate, His Worship Ereemye Jumire.
In his ruling the magistrate said, whereas the applicant had filed 14 other affidavits to support his early application filed at court, there was no evidence of ballot stuffing and there was no way a recount would be ordered yet there was no evidence to such.
He also in his ruling said that the ballot boxes were already tampered with and under this circumstance, the recount wasn’t proper. He finally dismissed the petition with costs.
The judge also in the other two related cases dismissed the cases with costs citing lack of proper evidence and asked the applicants to file a case at high court if they were not satisfied with his ruling.
