A panel of court of appeal judges has reserved ruling to October 31, 2017 in a matter in which 46 UPND members of parliament renewed their application in challenging the decision of the Speaker of the National Assembly to suspend them from the House.
And the Constitutional Court has reserved ruling to a date to be communicated in a matter where Doreen Mwamba has asked it to dismiss the Munali petition appeal due to the non inclusion of the video evidence in the appeal.
Court of appeal president Fulgeance Chisanga reserved ruling for October after hearing submissions from both parties.
The suspended parliamentarians renewed their application after High Court judge Petronella Ngulube dismissed their application for lack of merit.
Judge Ngulube declined to grant the MPs leave to apply for judicial review hence renewing their application before the court of appeal.
But Solicitor General Abraham Mwansa said the renewed application should be dismissed with costs to the applicants.
Mwansa argued that there was no arguable case warranting further investigation at a substantive hearing and so the matter should not be reviewed stating that the lawmakers should be condemned in costs.
He says it is inconceivable for the UPND chief whip, Garry Nkombo, who was the prime mover of the motion to plead that he was the first offender as was stated by others.
Meanwhile, after hearing the submissions for and against the dismissal of the video evidence in the Munali petition appeal, the ConCourt reserved its ruling to a later date.
In this matter, losing UPND candidate Doreen Mwamba asked the court to dismiss the appeal ,saying the record of appeal was defective and incomplete without the video evidence that lead to the nullification of the election results by Professor Nkandu Luo.
But Luo told the court not to entertain the objection by Mwamba in which she was challenging the court’s decision to discard the video evidence saying it was an abuse of the court process and that Doreen was not allowed to challenge the court’s ruling .
