The Attorney General (AG) has filed six grounds of objections against an application by Independent Power Tanzania Limited (IPTL) and Pan African Power Solutions Tanzania Limited (PAP) that sought to block the National Assembly from debating the controversial Escrow account.
Through Principal State Attorney Obadia
Kameya, the AG states that the application filed before the High Court
was untenable in law for want of jurisdiction — and was bad in law for
want of proper citation of an enabling provision of the law.
He states that the application is bad in
law for being supported by a defective affidavit as it contains
allegations and arguments contrary to the Civil Procedure Code and thus
untenable in law for want of board resolution sanctioning the
institution of the court action.
The AG states further that the
application before the court is fatally defective for merging public
remedy and private remedy, contrary to the governing good principles of
law much as it is defective for joining and, or, including the
non-existing legal persons.
Non-existing persons, who are among
respondents in the matter, are Speaker of the National Assembly and
Chairman of Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Tanzania.
Other respondents are the Prime Minister, Attorney General and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Energy and Minerals.
The rest are Controller and Auditor
General (CAG), Director General of the Prevention and Combating of
Corruption Bureau (PCCB) and Clerk of the National Assembly of Tanzania.
In the application, the applicants, IPTL
and PAP, were requesting for an interim order restraining PCCB and his
agents or any other person from furthering the purported special
investigation or submitting report that would occasion finalisation of
investigations of taking over IPTL.
They had also sought for a temporary
injunctive order restraining the respondents from committing acts that
would occasion laying a process before the National Assembly for debate
thereupon the impugned CAG report dated November 2014 on the escrow
account.
Last week, a panel consisting Judges
Radhia Sheikh, Richard Mziray and Lugano Mwandambo, stopped the National
Assembly from deliberating the CAG report on the Escrow account after
considering arguments presented by advocates for the applicants, Mr
Joseph Makandege and Mr Gabriel Mnyele.
The judges ordered the hearing of the
matter to proceed on December 8. However, despite such stop order, the
Parliament proceeded with the debate, an action that attracted a mixture
of feelings among legal practitioners on the possibility of creating a
constitutional crisis among the two pillars of the state.
By FAUSTINE KAPAMA
No comments:
Post a Comment