By Melanie Nathan, August 05, 2014.
One can expect that if a Parliament fails to follow basic protocol and procedure and passionate local and International law experts get together using activists as Plaintiff’s, it is unlikely that the law will withstand the test of Constitutionality. That is what happened in the case of the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act last week.
Not to mention what may well have been an orchestrated political ploy to hear the case early, in a quest by perhaps keen Justices to push the hearing forward, to coincide with President Museveni’s trip to the U.S.A.
Here is the official ruling – and while activists celebrated the ruling as an expected victory, Parliamentarians vowed in overwhelming numbers to reintroduce the law that provides harsh penalties for gays and lesbians, beyond the existing penal code that is still on the books criminalizing homosexuality.
The Court left open the questions of the merits and those arguments were not adjudicated upon, leaving room for the reintroduction of an identical law into Parliament.
By ruling on the technicality in Parliament, as can be seen from this official judgment, the human rights issues were never adjudicated upon, and like I mentioned on the very day of the ruling, neither the LGBT community nor the anti-gay forces could claim a moral high ground in this ruling, with huge anti-gay sentiment helming the future of where this may lead.
And so the door is open for a re-match – at great cost – again.
READ THE RULING:
Uganda Constitutional Court Ruling on the Anti Homosexuality Act Copy by oblog
Some excerpts
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