The High Court Civil Division has thrown out an application seeking to block the National Resistance Movement (NRM) decision to front Rt. Hon. Anita Annet Among and Rt. Hon. Thomas Tayebwa as its preferred candidates for Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the 12th Parliament.
The ruling, delivered on May 11, 2026, by Justice Collins Acellam, dismissed a petition filed by Jack Nsubuga, also known as Mandela, who had challenged the party’s endorsement made by the NRM Central Executive Committee (CEC).
The CEC meeting, held at State House Entebbe on January 29, 2026, had reaffirmed Among and Tayebwa as the party’s flag bearers for the top parliamentary leadership positions.
In his judgment, Justice Acellam agreed with preliminary objections raised by the NRM and the two senior parliamentary leaders, finding that the application was fundamentally flawed.
The court held that Nsubuga lacked legal standing to bring the case, noting that he was neither a Member of Parliament nor directly eligible for the positions he sought to challenge. The judge also faulted him for attempting to represent more than 72,000 LC1 chairpersons without securing a court-authorised representative order.
Additionally, the court found that the applicant had failed to exhaust the NRM’s internal dispute resolution mechanisms before escalating the matter to the judiciary, a requirement under the doctrine of exhaustion.
Nsubuga, a self-declared NRM member, had argued that the endorsement process was exclusionary and undermined internal party democracy. He claimed that eligible members of the NRM Parliamentary Caucus were denied an opportunity to express interest in the positions.
However, the respondents—including the NRM party, Rt. Hon. Anita Among, and Rt. Hon. Thomas Tayebwa—dismissed the petition as baseless, arguing that the CEC acted within its constitutional mandate to provide political direction and guidance to the party.
Justice Acellam emphasized that while political parties must operate within the law, courts should avoid interfering in internal party management unless clear illegality is demonstrated.
“Courts are guardians of legality, not supervisors of political strategy,” he ruled.
Although the application was dismissed, the court declined to impose costs on the applicant, noting that the matter raised broader constitutional questions relating to internal party democracy and governance. Instead, each party was directed to bear its own legal costs.
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