FAUSTINE KAPAMA
Daily News; Tuesday,March 06, 2007 @00:07
THE Court of Appeal has quashed all proceedings and orders given by then High Court Judge Steven Ihema in a case involving the winding up proceedings of the Tanzania Independent Power Limited (IPTL).
Justices Eusebia Munuo, January Msoffe and Engela Kileo ordered that the court records should be sent back to High Court Judge Katherine Oriyo as originally listed for her to proceed with the matter. Judge Ihema has retired.
"There are no reasons recorded for taking the case out of the list of cases that were assigned to Oriyo and putting it in the list of cases before Ihema," observed the justices in their recent ruling.
Parties to the case had complained about the conduct of Judge Ihema in re-assigning to himself the list of cases that had already been assigned to Judge Oriyo. The justices said such re-assignment gave them grave concerns.
According to the justices, the individual calendar system required that once a specific judge or magistrate was assigned to a certain matter, then he remained responsible for it until its conclusion unless there were good reasons for doing otherwise.
"In the circumstances, we hereby quash and set aside all proceedings and orders made by Ihema and order that the record be remitted to Oriyo for her to proceed with the application which was filed in the High Court on September 24, 2003," they ruled.
The ruling appeared for the time being to favour VIP Engineering and Marketing Limited against fellow shareholders, Mechmar Corporation of Malaysia in what has turned out to be a twisted path to liquidation of the equally controversial electricity generating company.
It all started with a notice filed at the High Court by the Malaysian company on September 8, 2003 for intention to file in the court the award issued earlier by the London Court of International Arbitration.
Some two weeks later, VIP Marketing also filed a counter application that challenged the jurisdiction of the London court and to have the award set aside. Mechmar Corporation also later petitioned the High Court to have the award enforced.
However, the application could not be heard as VIP Marketing had applied for revision orders at the Court of Appeal. VIP Marketing Director James Rugemalira appeared to be happy with the ruling that takes the whole case back to his application of September 23, 2003.