President Museveni has called for sentencing of hard core criminals by hanging saying this will reduce the number crime rates in the country.
Museveni said this during the swearing-in of the newly appointed Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo and his deputy, Justice Richard Buteera at state house Entebbe.
Owiny-Dollo is replacing retired Justice Bart Katureebe after he turned 70 years, the mandatory age for justices of the Supreme Court. Buteera replaces Dollo as Deputy Chief justice at the Court of Appeal where he has served since 2017 when he replaced Justice Steven Kavuma.
“Sentencing for life should be stopped and let people be hanged. An eye for an eye should be used to best solve these cases. The issue of police bond saying leads to denial of justice and taints that credibility of the judicial system. The bail for cases of murder, rape aggravated robbery should be stopped to bring the concept of justice closer for the public,” Museveni said.
The president warned of excessive travelling abroad saying Uganda shilling is stabilising compared to the recent month before the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus. “The shilling is gaining on the dollar and yet we have lost money from tourism. This is alluded to the factor that the elite class are not squandering money,” he said.
In his remarks, Owiny-Dollo appealed to the president and the executive to pay more attention to enabling Ugandans receive timely and meaningful justice. “We are committed to giving meaning to your vision.”
He raised the issue of staffing versus case backlog. He said two to three trillion is tied up in the Commercial Division in Kampala. “We have only five Judges there. Imagine what these sums would do to the economy if they were released into the economy.”
“If I had 15 Judges in the Commercial Division, in 18 months, I should be able to report progress. We don’t have that man power and our hands are tied. How can the CJ ensure speedy rendering of Justice when one Judge has to look after 4,000 files? We must do something?” he said.
