The East African Court of Justice sitting in Arusha, Tanzania has on Thursday disbanded an application filed by Male Mabirizi Kiwanuka seeking an interim order to halt the 2021 elections.

A panel of five judges including justices, Monica Mugenyi, Faustin Ntezilayo, Audace Ngiye, Charles Nyawello, and Charles Nyachao unanimously refused to allow Mabirizi’s application while delivering their judgment.

Last year, Mabirizi ran to the East African Court of justice challenging the 2018 Constitutional Amendment Act that scrapped the upper and lower cap on the presidential age.

Mabirizi claimed that the MPs amended the presidential age limit clauses (102b) in the Constitution by use of violence and deployment of military police in and outside Parliament which he says is unconstitutional.

Mabirizi together with other Ugandans first challenged up to the Supreme Court the constitutionality of the amendment but lost on both occasions. His co-applicants gave up the appeal when the Supreme Court ruled in a 4:3 majority to dismiss the application.

Delivering their judgment the judges ruled that based on the material on record, the implementation of the impugned act and the preparation for the 2021 general election is well underway.

According to the judgment, the effects to the electoral process of granting the interim orders sought cannot be ignored because this would mean to halt all preparations for and processes designed to lead the general election scheduled for 2021.

The judgment goes on to say that, this would also include putting a stop to processes intended to align all electoral laws and regulations to the impugned Uganda constitution amendment act 2018.

“It is clear that the electoral timetable is quite constrained and to halt any part of it for any length of time would certainly throw the electoral cycle into disarray with obvious political, social and economic not to mention constitutional ramifications,” the judgment reads.

It however also adds in the same paragraph that should the court decline to grant the orders sought and Mabirizi subsequently succeeds in his case against term limits, huge levels of public resources would have been effectively spent in vain, causing Ugandan taxpayers significant monetary loss. To address this, the court ordered for quick fixing of the original application so that it’s heard and determined before it’s overtaken by events.