Court proceedings in the Kawempe North by-election petition took an unexpected turn on Tuesday when Faridah Nambi, the runner-up in the March 13 poll, was asked to pause her testimony to fetch a calculator and justify her claims of massive voter disenfranchisement.
Appearing before Justice Bernard Namanya at the Civil Division of the High Court, Nambi faced cross-examination from lawyers representing Elias Nalukoola Luyimbazi, the declared winner under the National Unity Platform (NUP). Nalukoola garnered 17,939 votes, while Nambi, running on the NRM ticket, polled 9,058.
Central to Nambi’s petition is her allegation that 16,640 voters were disenfranchised due to the exclusion of results from 14 polling stations — a claim she argued would have significantly altered the outcome.
However, under intense questioning from lead counsel Muhammad Mbabazi, Nambi struggled to substantiate the figure.
Justice Namanya granted a ten-minute adjournment, allowing Nambi to obtain a calculator and compute the alleged disenfranchised votes with help from her legal team led by Ahmed Mukasa Kalule.
With calculator in hand, Nambi returned to the stand and began reading numbers from documents prepared by her lawyers. She named the polling stations she claimed were excluded from the final tally, asserting that the missing votes—if counted—could have closed the 8,881-vote gap between her and Nalukoola.
But Nalukoola’s legal team wasn’t convinced. Mbabazi insisted that even if the 14 polling stations were included, Nambi couldn’t mathematically erase Nalukoola’s commanding lead. He called her assertions speculative and said they failed to meet the legal threshold for annulling an election.
During the heated cross-examination, lawyers Remmy Bagyenda and Samuel Muyizzi Mulindwa pressed Nambi on whether she had concrete evidence that the 16,640 alleged voters would have supported her.
Nambi admitted she couldn’t confirm whether those voters turned up, nor was she personally present at the affected polling stations.
She was further questioned about her claim that her polling agents failed to return results due to electoral irregularities and violence. Asked to provide details of the alleged chaos, including times and locations, Nambi said her agents reported disturbances but admitted she did not witness them herself.
Nambi also confirmed her NRM affiliation and reiterated accusations that Nalukoola engaged in voter bribery and campaigned on polling day—claims yet to be tackled in detail by the opposing legal team.
Also, Nalukoola’s lawyers requested the court to strike out affidavits from Nambi’s witnesses who were not available for cross-examination, arguing their evidence amounted to inadmissible hearsay. Justice Namanya reserved ruling on the matter.
