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THE Constitutional Court (ConCourt) has ordered Ndola High Court Judge Edward Musona to view a video allegedly containing scenes of violence that characterised the Munali Constituency parliamentary election in 2016.
The ConCourt said Justice Musona should view the video together with both parties and submit supplementary bundles to the record of appeal as well as the findings by March 29, this year.
This was in an appeal application by United Party for National Development (UPND) losing candidate Doreen Mwamba who wanted to know whether the bench had jurisdiction to u-turn or review its own ruling.
Ms Mwamba through her lawyers argued that the ConCourt had no jurisdiction to review its own ruling, because there was no law that allowed them and would be prejudicial to the final determination.
The ConCourt had on July 5, last year, allowed the viewing of the said video in a matter where Higher Education Minister and Munali Member of Parliament (MP) Nkandu Luo appealed against the decision of the High Court to nullify her seat on account of electoral process abrogation.
The same bench, then sat on July 18 and u-turned on the earlier ruling by rejecting the video evidence forcing Ms Mwamba to appeal against the ruling.
ConCourt Judge Enock Mulembe delivering a ruling yesterday said although the law was silent on the ConCourt, it was allowed to invoke inheritance powers to do so and allowed the ground of appeal.
“We are convinced that the interest of justice should be done by allowing the ruling of July 5, 2017 for the proper determination of this matter,” Justice Mulembe said.
The court dismissed another ground of appeal to have it dismissed as it was incomplete because it was covered in the first ground.
The Constitutional Court had ordered that the video depicting the violence that characterised the Munali parliamentary election in 2016 should be produced in court if both parties agree that the content was the same as that which was viewed before Judge Musona who nullified Professor Luo’s seat based on what he saw.
It also ruled that if the parties did not agree on the contents of the video, it would instruct Judge Musona to view the video in question for purposes of determining its authenticity.
But Judge Anne Sitali, sitting with judges Mungeni Mulenga and Justice Mulembe, u-turned on their earlier ruling and ordered that the video, which Ms Mwamba was to produce could not be admitted because of possible contaminated.
This was after lawyers representing Prof Luo led by Bonaventure Mutale objected to the admission of the video saying some of the content was missing.
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