Severino Twinobusingye, a voter from Kanungu district who won a case against the Attorney General on behalf of 3 cabinet ministers, wants to be paid over 23.6 billion shillings as costs spent while prosecuting this case.
The three including Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kuteesa and that of Internal Affairs Hillary Onek, had been asked by Parliament to step aside from their respective offices in order to pave way for investigations into the allegations that they received bribes from foreign oil exploration companies to sign agreements.
Twinobusingye, a lawyer from Kanungu district, filed his bill of costs before the Constitutional Court through his lawyers of Mugisha and Company Advocates.
In order to justify his overwhelming claim, Twinobusingye stressed that his lawyers had to abandon other things, embark on constant research and filed bulky documents to prosecute what he termed as a matter of great national importance and maintenance of the rule of law.
In March this year, 5 judges of the Constitutional Court led by the Deputy Chief Justice Alice Mpagi Behigeine awarded Twinobusingye 2/3 of the total costs after they concurred with him that MPs had no powers to order the ministers resign from their cabinet posts as it’s a preserve of the cabinet itself.
However, the court declined to halt the Ad hoc committees from investigating the ministers as he had asked it to do.
Twinobusingye’s suit had sought a court order to dismiss the October 2011 parliamentary resolutions that led to the formation of an ad hoc committee to investigate corruption allegations against Mbabazi and his two cabinet colleagues. He also wanted to render useless the work of the parliamentary committee investigating Mbabazi and Onek for contempt of parliament after they refused to step aside.
On October 11 last year, during a special parliamentary debate on the oil sector, Western Youth MP Gerald Karuhanga tabled before the House what he called evidence that Mbabazi, Kutesa and Onek had illegally benefited from Tullow Oil, one of the oil exploration companies in the country.
Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi was accused of soliciting for bribes by facilitating meetings between oil companies while Onek and Kutesa were accused of receiving 5.6 million Euros and 17.5 million Euros respectively. The trio, however, denied the allegations.
