I have found it imperative to write to you, Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny Dollo, and to bring to your attention the following matters which require your urgent attention, reflection, consideration and action.
On March 18, 2021, while executing my duties as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Uganda, I informed the parties that my files and reasoned Rulings in the applications filed in Kyagulanyi v Museveni Presidential Election Petition No. 1 of 2021 had been grabbed from court on your apparent orders.
My verbal and written requests to you to return my rulings and files on that day, and later March/April 2021 were flagrantly ignored by you. While you initially denied knowledge of my Files and Rulings, in your Referral letter to the Judicial Service Commission dated April 6, 2021, you unequivocally admitted having custody of them and to even reading my reasoned Rulings.
You repeated the same admissions in your Affidavit in support of your reply filed in Constitutional Petition No. 30 of 2022. Furthermore, on April 6, 2021, you submitted a 15 – page Referral document to the Justice Kabito led Judicial Service Commission which, among others, was full of hearsay and abuses about me, my upbringing and my mental health and faulted me for always exercising judicial independence, during the execution of my judicial duties.
Your Referral document, which you knowingly did not name as a complaint and did not amount to a valid complaint in law, was however baptized by the Kabiito led commission as a complaint and used to conduct an unconstitutional discreet inquiry about me and to make a recommendation to the President to set up a tribunal to inquire into my insistence to perform my duties as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Uganda, which you and the Judicial Service Commission unlawfully alleged to constitute judicial misconduct.
Your failure to admit your lies later misled President Museveni, the President of Uganda to (a) defer acceptance of my early retirement from the Supreme Court of Uganda in October 2023; and (b) to appoint an unconstitutional tribunal of inquiry in February 2025, to inquire into the very statements you had already admitted in April 2021.
Please find my opencommentary on the tribunal which highlights the constitutional, legal, ethical and moral issues arising from, among others, your unconstitutional actions and omissions and calls for your reflection and action.
Based on the issues discussed in my commentary, I concluded that the tribunal’s appointment is a nullity. Notwithstanding my conclusion, I have already commenced preparations for my defence, if the tribunal Members decide to continue with the unconstitutional inquiry.
I urgently need my Rulings and files which you confiscated as part of my evidence for the tribunal. Please return my original rulings and files which have been in your custody since March 18, 2021, to my official residence in a sealed tamper free envelope, not later than 14 days from the date of this letter. If you wish, you may keep a copy for your records.
Once I receive the same, I will review the contents and confirm receipt of the contents received. Furthermore, as at the time of writing this letter, four and a half years have lapsed and still you have failed to come out to inform the President and the people of Uganda that in March 2021, you lied when you claimed that you did not authorize the grabbing of my files on March 18, 2021 when I was scheduled to deliver my reasoned Rulings and that you did not have my files.
As you approach your retirement as the Chief Justice of Uganda on January 18, 2026, you have a constitutional, legal and ethical duty to the people of Uganda to clean up the mess you started on March 18, 2021 and to save yourself the burden of not taking this baggage with you into your retirement.
It is against this background that I am calling upon you to (a) own up to own mistakes, (b) save the image of the Judiciary, and (c) help the country to avoid wasting scarce public resources by: (i) Retracting your unconstitutional and unlawful Referral document dated 6th April 2021 which you submitted to the Judicial Service Commission.
(ii) Retracting your factually incorrect additional Statement made in June 2022 to the Judicial Service Commission where you falsely accused me of abscondment from duty when there is publicly available evidence of Judgments I wrote and delivered during the period in question.
(iii) Walking the talk on your signature Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Judiciary wide initiative, by agreeing to participate in ADR talks in respect of Constitutional Petition No. 30 of 2022, Justice Kisaakye v Justice Owiny Dollo, Chief Justice of Uganda & Others.
These ADR talks should be presided over by eminent people agreeable to either side. Lastly, you would do Ugandans and yourself well if you followed the precedent that you set earlier when you made a public apology to the Kabaka of Buganda by: (i) Apologizing to the people of Uganda for your unconstitutional directives and actions on March 18, 2021; for bringing the Supreme Court of Uganda and the office of Chief Justice of Uganda in disrepute on March 18, 2021, and for undermining Judicial independence when you unconstitutionally stopped me from delivering my reasoned Rulings in the applications filed in the Kyagulanyi v Museveni Presidential Election Petition 2021.
(ii) Apologizing to the parties who have not received Justice from the Supreme Court because of sidelining and preventing me, a duly appointed, well qualified and the most senior Judge on the Court, from hearing new cases from October 2021 up to my early retirement from the Court on July 18, 2023.
The author is a retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Uganda.
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