Jailed Ruhinda MP Donozio Mugabe Kahonda has challenged the distant August date set by High court at Jinja for his bail hearing.
According to the chief registrar, Paul Gadenya, Kahonda says the date is too far in the future. Gadenya advised the embattled MP to petition the principal judge, Yorokamu Bamwine.
According to Gadenya, the earlier judge who had been allocated Kahonda’s file is currently away presiding over a criminal session. As a result, the nearest date that the judge can be available is in August yet Kahonda wants his bail application hearing fast-tracked.
MP Kahonda last week applied to be released on bail pending the hearing of his appeal in which he is challenging his conviction and subsequent nine-month jail sentence handed down by the Jinja Chief Magistrate’s court. The magistrate’s court convicted him for forgery.
He appealed against this verdict before the High court at Jinja under Criminal Appeal No. 22 of 2017. Kahonda, a retired Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) captain, was on June 7 found guilty of eleven counts of impersonation, forgery and uttering false documents by Jinja Chief Magistrate’s court and was immediately sent to Kirinya prison.
The charges against the legislator, who trounced Justice minister Kahinda Otafiire in the 2016 parliamentary elections, stemmed from allegations that he uttered a Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) to Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) and pretended to be Mutabazi Levan Dickson.
Kahonda is also accused of having forged a medical report to gain entry at the Military Academy in Jinja in the names of Mutabazi Levan Dickson and purported that the same document was genuine, whereas not.
Some of the grounds for Kahonda’s bail application are that he has demonstrated exceptional circumstances to warrant release on bail. He also challenges the jurisdiction of the Chief Magistrate’s court of Jinja for having handled his case that did not originate from within local limits of the court.
The MP also argues that the Chief Justice did not authorize the hearing as provided for under Section 7 of the Magistrate’s Courts Act to cure the illegality, hence its decision was a nullity.
