Judgment No. SC 69/15 5 Civil Appeal No. SC 9/14 2. THE ISSUES I will now turn to the issues raised by this appeal, starting with the one relating to the jurisdiction or lack thereof, of the court a quo to determine the matter. 2.1 Jurisdiction The court a quo, as is evident from the above, took the view that it could not grant the relief sought because it lacked the jurisdiction to do so and in any case there was a ‘lacuna’ in the law, which created a situation where no safeguards existed against the possibility of exposing election residue of 3rd parties not before it. The court made reference to s 167(2)(b) of the Constitution which reads as follows: ‘Subject to the Constitution only the Constitutional Court may (a) … (b) hear and determine disputes relating to election to the office of the President (my emphasis) The court then went on to opine as follows:“An order by this Court granting him such relief will of necessity also result in access to election residue pertaining to the Presidential and Local Authority elections. This is so by virtue of the ‘harmonised’ nature of the residue as already discussed earlier. Such an order would therefore effectively be one that besides granting access to the House of Assembly residue, would also have the effect of attaining a result that is beyond or outside this Court’s jurisdiction. This Court has no jurisdiction to grant an order that has the effect of simultaneously allowing for the opening of closed and/or sealed ballot boxes and/or packets with Presidential, House of Assembly and Local Authority electoral residue.” The appellant challenges the stance taken by the court a quo and argues that the issues before it did not require the court to hear or determine a dispute relating to the