The Justice of the Court of Appeal Kenneth Kakuru has Tuesday morning breathed his last at Agha Khan hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.
Kakuru, 65, was admitted with prostate cancer which had been in advanced stage.
Kakuru has been known as a strict judge owing to his judgements and other court decisions.
In 2018, he gave a dissenting judgment nullifying removal of age limits out of the Constitution.
Justice Kakuru who began by reciting the country’s history right from the ‘reign of terror’ of Idi Amin to the current NRM government quoted President Museveni’s 1986 speech where he promised democratic governance, change in quality of politics, and people power.
In his judgment, Kakuru explained that the MPs consulted very few people, a size which was not representative of the actual number of voters as registered by the Electoral Commission during the previous 2016 elections.
“There was no enough evidence that people of Uganda participated in these amendments. The evidence is too insignificant to constitute a meaningful participation of the people,” he ruled.
“Having said all that, I declare that the entire amendment was unconstitutional and should be declared null and void,” Justice Kakuru ruled before awarding costs to petitioners.
He also ruled that extending the tenure for parliament from five to seven years was illegal because it contravened the provisions of the constitution.
“If we go by what happened, it would mean that parliament would every five years extend its terms without holding an election and this is what Idi Amin did by declaring himself life president and parliament,”Kakuru ruled.
“They can even abolish the judiciary.”
Kakuru was also among the justices that nullified section 8 of the Public Order Management Act which was previously used by police to stop public gatherings.
This section was used specifically to target opposition gatherings.
The judge has made several other rulings that have rattled the status quo.
In 2021, Kakuru applied for early retirement citing his deteriorating health condition.
By that time, the judge was 63 years old and was seven years shy of the retirement age for Court of Appeal judges.