JUBA – South Sudan government is ready for graduation of the first batch of unified forces in Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal regions next week, the country’s presidential security advisor Tut Gatluak Manimeh, who is also the head of the National Transitional Committee (NTC), said Friday.

This comes less than a week after the government graduated over 21,000 peace soldiers comprising army, police, and officers of the prison service, national security offices, and civil defense.

More than 53,000 unified forces are expected to graduate this year and will take part in national security, police, prison services, and even wildlife services.

The goal is to graduate 83,000 as enshrined in the 2018 peace deal.

Speaking during a press conference in Juba on Friday, Gatluak said forces in Torit in Eastern Equatoria will be graduated together with forces in the Upper and Bahr el Ghazal regions.

“We are going to graduate forces presence in Torit Town in Eastern Equatoria, military camp in the Upper Nile, Bahr el Ghazal and Unity State next week,” Gatluak said at Friday’s press conference.

“As preparation to graduate forces in unity state, the forces have been a move from Kaljak to Bentiu town for graduation and they are now in Bentiu.”

Gatluak disclosed that after graduation, phase two will commence.

“The forces will be graduated and we begin phase two, all forces in Equatoria, Bahr el Ghazel and Upper Nile will get into training centers,” he said.

“If we deploy the unified forces, the problem in South Sudan will be resolved because when we have one army working for national interest, they will resolve the issues of proliferation of the arms.”

He said the unified forces will take charge of security across the country.

“They will address the border issues and also problems such as cattle raiding and others that need coordination with civil authorities.” - Sudans Post

Parties in the court case challenging President-elect William Ruto’s win clashed over a report by the court’s registrar on the scrutiny of ballot boxes and the electoral commission’s ICT systems.

Lawyers representing the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and Ruto accused Azimio leader Raila Odinga’s side of lying to the court on the contents of the report.

This happened even as Raila’s side, and other petitioners, pointed at irregularities that they deemed glaring enough to annual the presidential election. The petitioners went first, claiming they had filed their observations, documents that the court would reject, which they said observed that some logs were deleted on IEBC’s server. 

That was contrary to Registrar Letizia Wachira’s report, which had indicated that no deletions had occurred. Raila’s lawyer Philip Murgor had also said that foreigners had accessed the systems 180 times during the election.

Justice Isaac Lenaola tasked Murgor to prove the claim, despite the registrar’s evidence that foreigners had accessed the said servers days before the election. Murgor said that their document, which the court declined to admit, had evidence of the same, arguing that the registrar’s report omitted the same.

The IEBC would adopt the registrar’s findings in the aspect that foreigners had not accessed the IEBC servers during the election period.

The petitioners further argued that the IEBC had not complied with all its orders on access to the said ICT infrastructure, with the polls agency dismissing the same. 

Ms Wachira’s report, however, indicated that the electoral agency had not provided all that the Supreme Court had ordered.

Njoki Mboche, appearing for the Youth Advocacy group, argued that the scrutiny had established “breaches, illegalities and gaps”, faulting the IEBC for disregarding some of the Supreme Court’s orders.

“They amended orders of this court... The agents indicated that when they were asked about the password policy, they said it would infringe on their security... Yet that was important in establishing who had control,” Ms Mboche said.

Khelef Khalifa’s lawyer Willis Otieno would claim that foreigners were in control of the election, arguing that a “Supreme Court order had been countermanded by a letter”, in reference to a letter by election technology firm Smartmatic that it would not grant a forensic image of the result transmission system.

“Have you been granted access to the entire election infrastructure? The answer is no,” Mr Otieno said. 

On the scrutiny of ballot boxes, the IEBC said the numbers declared in Forms 34A matched the ordered recount, faulting the petitioners for attempting to evade the subject in their responses.

“No one had addressed the pertinent issue that no result varied with those announced in Forms 34A,” IEBC’s lawyer Emmanuel Wetang’ula said. “There was no variance in 40 of the 45 polling stations sampled.”

He termed some variances recorded were minor, arguing that they would not have affected the election’s outcome. “If there is no variance, then we wonder what the complaint is,” he said, pointing out that the scrutiny discounted assertions of transposition of results from one candidate to the next.

The petitioners had argued that their scrutiny had been qualitative in nature, revealing major anomalies that cast doubt to the integrity of the election. One such anomaly was the absence of Book 2 of 2 of Forms 34A, documents that were meant to be left unused and sealed in ballot boxes.

Mr Otieno argued that Chebukati had unilaterally printed the said set of Forms 34A as a ploy to flood polling stations with genuine forms that would be used to transmit results that were not genuine.

Lawyer Tom Macharia, representing Youth Advocacy Africa, argued that Chebukati was wrong to “correct” results as sworn in Veronica Maina’s affidavit.

He said the UDA Secretary-General had stated that the IEBC chair had corrected some errors. Raila’s lawyer Jackson Awele said IEBC had not provided Forms 32A for some polling stations where voters had voted manually. Brian Otieno, The Standard

The Buganda Road Magistrate's court has declined the state's request to issue criminal summons against Dr Kizza Besigye.

Besigye is jointly charged with former Rubaga South Constituency parliamentary candidate Samuel Lubega Mukaaku over offences stemming from their June 14, 2022 protest against the skyrocketing prices of commodities in the country.

They are accused of staging an assembly at Kikuubo Shauriyako parish in Kampala central division where they allegedly made statements indicating that it would be desirable to demonstrate, which was an act calculated to cause damage and destruction of property. Today Friday, the court presided over by grade one magistrate, Asuman Muhumuza was expected to be updated on the progress of the case by the prosecutors, but Besigye failed to turn up.

State prosecutor Ivan Kyazze asked court to issue criminal summons against Besigye. He told the court that they had come with part of the evidence they intend to rely on to prosecute both Besigye and Mukaku.

Among the evidence which has been shared with Besigye's lawyers is a charge sheet,  statements from 11 witnesses majority of whom are police officers, his vehicle profile, and a search certificate.

Besigye's lawyers led by Samuel Muyizzi Mulindwa, told court that their client was in Ntungamo district, western Uganda to attend the burial of the former minister of Cooperatives Yonasani Kanyomozi who died on Sunday last week.

According to Muyizzi, Besigye sought advice on whether to attend court or the burial since they were all happening on the same day. Muyizzi says that he advised Besigye to attend the burial, arguing that he had information that the case was not going to proceed today since the prosecutors had not shared the evidence they intend to rely on in the case.

Magistrate Muhumuza accepted Muyizzi's submission saying it was satisfactory and accordingly declined to grant the request by the prosecution to issue a criminal summons. 

Muhumuza also noted that if Besigye had been present in court, he would have dismissed the charges against him and Mukaaku. He said that in the previous court session, he directed the prosecutors to share with the defense lawyers the evidence they intend to rely on but since then they have not complied with his directive. Muhumuza adjourned the case to October 24. By URN/The Observer