documents under S 73 of the Evidence Act. Therefore, as such they should be
proved by certified copies from the Electoral commission.
None of them is so
certified, according to the evidence on record. There is hardly any evidence that the
Electoral Commission was ever required or notified to produce them into court.
Counsel for the respondent, when confronted with this problem from the submissions
of counsel for the 1st appellant respondet that it was not true that the respondent never
asked for those Declarations of Results Forms and the tally sheet. He pointed out
that a letter had been written to the Electoral Commission asking for the documents.
The letter in question is dated the 22nd June 2006.
Our careful perusal of the letter of the above date annexed to the appellant’s
additional affidavit in support of the petition as annexture ‘U’ reveals that the letter
requested for the National Voters Register for members of parliament for a number of
parishes in Goma Sub County. Nowhere in that letter is either a request for, or a
notice to produce the said documents by the Electoral Commission is revealed. It is
our inference, therefore, that the Electoral commission was never asked to provide the
appellant with either the tally sheet or any of those Declaration of Results Forms.
Similarly, the 1st respondent was never notified, as required by law, that those
Declaration of Results Forms and the tally sheet should be produced. See Kakooza
John Baptist Vs Electoral Commission and Another, Election Petition Appeal
No. 16 of 2006(sc). The non certification of these documents and the failure by the
appellant to ask for them from or give the required notice to the 1st respondent to
produce them in court rendered the source of the Declaration of Results Forms and the
tally sheet in issue highly questionable. In fact, it is on record that one of such
Declaration of Results Form for Sonde polling station was retrieved from one, Kizito,
a shop keeper in the locality neither being an official of the 1st appellant nor a polling
agent of the respondent.
I am not persuaded that because under the provisions of the law the Electoral
Commission officials are obliged to complete forms that are exactly the same for the
retention of the 1st respondent in the sealed boxes containing the official results and
those retained by the other recipients, the source of those used without complying
with S 73 of the Evidence Act should not been questioned. This failure removed any
evidential value from those documents that they may have had, had they been