The Uganda Judiciary: Deputy Chief Justice Bahegeine, retires

Anthony Wesaka

Deputy Chief Justice Alice Mpagi Bahegeine has retired from the bench after clocking the retirement age of 70. This was revealed yesterday by Ms Dorcas Okalany, Secretary to the Judiciary while appearing before the Legal and parliamentary Affairs committee.

Article 144 of the Constitution, states that a judicial officer may retire at any time after attaining age of sixty years, and shall vacate his or her office.

However, the same article goes ahead to state that in case of the Chief Justice, the Deputy Chief Justice, a Justice of the Supreme Court and a Justice of Appeal, they shall retire on attaining the age of seventy years.

Ms Bahegeine's retirement comes hardly two years after she was appointed to the second highest position in the judiciary. This will paralyse work at the Court of Appeal/Constitutional Courts unless the appointing authority swiftly moves in to appoint more judges to replace her.

Her retirement now leaves only five justices at the Court of Appeal (Constance Byamugisha, Stella Arach Amoko, Remmy Kasule, Steven Kavuma and Amos Nshimye), though they are supposed to be eleven.

Though Ms Bahegeine has retired this week, she will officially throw in her towel three months from now.

She is expected between now and then, to complete the cases that she had commenced hearing. Most of these cases are election appeals since the Court of Appeal has since the begging of this year been handling election related cases.

She retires at a time when Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki and Supreme Court Judge John Wilson Tsekoko are also set to retire next year.

Source: Saturday Monitor (28/07/2012):
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Deputy+chief+justice+Bahegeine+retires/-/688334/1464672/-/lqsf4az/-/index.html