Nassari saga: Now court suspends Arumeru East by-election
What you need to know:
- Arumeru East Member of Parliament Joshua Nassari filed a case in the High Court to have the Speaker Job Ndugai’s decision to strip him of his membership to the House undone.
Dodoma. The High Court in Dodoma has ordered the suspension of a by-election in Arumeru East Constituency until a case that Joshua Nassari filed at the High Court to undo the Speaker’s decision to declare the constituency vacant is determined.
Briefing journalists on Wednesday, March 20, the Court’s Deputy Registrar Dayness Lyimo said the case, No. 22 of 2019, shall be heard by Judge Latifa Mansoor.
She also said that the respondents to the application are the Speaker and the Attorney General and that these have been given seven days to submit their objections to the application.
“The judge also ordered that no by-election should be held in the constituency until this application is heard and a decision is made on it,” she said.
Mr Nassari, who was present at the Court in the morning on Wednesday, is represented by three advocates who are Hekima Mwasipe, Jonathan Mndeme and Fred Kalonga.
The respondents to the matter are represented by state attorney Masunga Kawahanda.
The matter shall be brought before the Court again on March 27 for hearing.
On Wednesday, March 13, 2019, the office of the National Assembly issued a press release saying that it had written to the chairman of the National Electoral Commission, Judge Semistocles Kaijage, informing him that the Arumeru East constituency was vacant because Mr Nassari no longer qualified to hold the post of a Member of Parliament because he had missed three consecutive parliamentary meetings.
“The decision by the Speaker is in accordance with Section 71 (1) (C) of the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania which states that a Member of Parliament shall lose his/her seat if he/she misses attending three consecutive parliamentary sittings without permission from the Speaker,” says a statement.
The applied constitutional section is also elaborated on the Parliamentary Standing Orders Article 146 (1) and (2) of January 2016.
The Standing Orders explain that attending parliamentary committee meetings and Parliament sittings was the first mandatory requirement of a Member of Parliament and any MP who misses three consecutive meetings without informing the Speaker will have their positions stripped of them.
