BALONDEMU: Rights Defender Faced With Abuse of Own Rights Amid Arrests, Bail Denials

Dr David Balondemu, the boss of Kampala District Land Boss, is at the receiving end of the vice
of human rights abuse which he was trained for four years to avert.
Intriguingly, the courts where he was trained to go to and defend people’s rights and freedoms
from being abused are the ones currently at the very center and nucleus of abusing his own
rights.

The well-read lawyer considering he is a Ph.D. holder during his young years of legal practice, has been
arrested twice, denied bail twice, and remanded to prison twice. That has happened merely because the presiding magistrates lazily and casually asserted that they needed time to assess the application not because the applicant had not either met the conditions and terms for the grant of bail, previously jumped bail, or had failed to meet the legal and constitutional thresholds for the enjoyment of that right granted to him, moreover, by the Constitution of the land.

The magistrates have been doing this in light of unambiguous directions issued by their boss,
Chief Justice Alphonso Owiny Dollo to grant bail or refuse with very justifiable and compelling
reasons for not doing so. 

Legal Limbo

The first time he was arraigned, Balondemu was charged with an offense related to an alleged two billion shillings gold scam, denied bail, and remanded yet he had produced before court very reliable and responsible sureties and was even willing and ready to meet other terms and conditions set by court for granting to him bail. Barely a fortnight after securing his freedom, Balondemu would be arrested again on charges related to illegal tender- brokering, denied bail, and remanded to prison yet again in exactly the same controversial circumstances just as it had happened previously when he had first appeared before the court on the separate charges of gold.

As I write, Balondemu remains on remand no matter if he is still presumed innocent the same reason the Constitution permits bail since he is not fit to be in jail at the same time that his accusers have not proved his guilt to the satisfaction of the court.

Rule of Law in Question

As it turns out, Balondemu’s fate remains at the mercy of magistrates even at the same time as
the supreme law of the land itself grants the right to bail. This is so bad and unfortunate to happen to a man who studied law for a total of years it was emphasized to him that the Constitution of the land reigns supreme. That is made worse by the fact that the magistrates who happened to deny Balondemu his rights and freedoms likely went to the university and studied the same law degree course as him.

This has not been an exercise to assert that Balondemu didn’t commit whatever it is he stands
accused of but to assert and emphasize that in the eyes of the law and of the Constitution he is
still regarded as an innocent man which is why his rights need to be respected and observed in the
meantime by most especially the courts since they are treated as the vanguard and Temple of
Justice unless they are not.