The High Court in Masaka has dismissed an election petition filed by former Defence Minister Vincent Bamulangaki Ssempijja challenging the election of Yusuf Kiruluuta Nkeretanyi as the Member of Parliament for Kalungu East Constituency.
The petition was dismissed after the court found that it had been filed outside the 30-day statutory period prescribed for challenging parliamentary election results.
The ruling was delivered by Justice Joyce Kavuma and read by Masaka Deputy Registrar Roy Karungi.
The court held that Ssempijja filed the petition after the mandatory deadline had expired and ruled that it had no jurisdiction to extend the statutory period.
The court consequently dismissed the petition and directed each party to meet its own costs.
The decision leaves Nkeretanyi, who contested on the National Unity Platform (NUP) ticket, as the duly elected MP for Kalungu East, subject to any successful appeal or other legal challenge available under the law.
The dispute arose from the January 15, 2026 parliamentary elections, in which Nkeretanyi was declared the winner with 15,473 votes against Ssempijja’s 13,219 votes, giving him a majority of 2,254 votes.
Ssempijja challenged the outcome, citing alleged irregularities in the counting and tallying of votes and asked the courts to order a recount across the constituency.
In January, the Masaka Chief Magistrate’s Court granted an application for a recount. However, the exercise was halted after several ballot boxes were found with broken, unsealed or apparently tampered seals, raising concerns about the integrity of the recount process.
Ssempijja maintained that irregularities in the tallying process had affected the final result and that a recount would establish what he considered the genuine outcome of the election.
The recount dispute was later followed by the High Court petition in which Ssempijja sought to have Nkeretanyi’s election overturned.
When the High Court began handling the petition in September, lawyers for Nkeretanyi raised a preliminary objection challenging the admissibility and competence of the case.
During proceedings reported on September 14, Nkeretanyi’s lawyer, Kenneth Kakande, argued that the petition had been lodged outside the mandatory 30-day period following the gazetting of Nkeretanyi as the elected MP.
Ssempijja’s lawyers, in response, asked the court to allow them to file an application seeking to validate the pleadings.
The court first considered the preliminary issue before determining whether the substantive allegations concerning the election could be heard.
In her ruling, Justice Kavuma found that the statutory period had already expired and that the court lacked jurisdiction to extend the deadline in the circumstances.
The ruling meant that the court did not proceed to examine the substantive allegations raised by Ssempijja regarding the conduct of the election.
The case, registered as Election Petition No. 016 of 2026, was brought against Nkeretanyi and the Electoral Commission and is among several parliamentary election petitions arising from the 2026 general elections being handled by the High Court in Masaka.
With the petition dismissed on the ground of limitation, Nkeretanyi’s election remains in force unless the decision is successfully challenged through the available legal avenues.
The ruling therefore resolves the petition without the court making a determination on the merits of Ssempijja’s allegations concerning the election result.
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