The East African court of Justice (EACJ) has dismissed the case of a Tanzanian national seeking reinstatement of an appeal in the case he filed to stop the EAC member states which have not yet signed the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA’s) deal not to sign them.

The appeal filed by Castro Pius Shirima on 5th March 2018 was dismissed on grounds of non-appearance of the applicant or his lawyer despite being notified on time, which amounted to abuse of court process.

The first appeal was dismissed on 15th February, 2018 for what the court said was unbecoming behavior of the appellant which amounted to abuse of court process within the contemplation of rule 1(2) of the court rules on inherent powers of the court, which was demonstrated through inappropriate communication to the court and to the other parties.

But on 5th March 2018, the advocate for the Appellant filed a notice of motion seeking an order for the same appeal to be reinstated and heard on merits, until its dismissal on May 10th, 2018.

Injunction

This further dampens any chances of this one-man spirited fight having any impact to change the direction of the EPA’s deal.

The injunction filed in 2017 also sought the countries which had already penned their signatures to the agreement be stopped from carrying out any further procedures and processes.

The court in its ruling said it was persuaded that the application be dismissed with costs as being abuse of court process for reasons such as, the application being misconceived, and that the initial appeal was not dismissed on non appearance but rather on amendment of documents, therefore, it was not in the premises open to the appellant to make his application for the appeal to be restored for hearing on merits under Rule 107 (2).

Besides failing to appear personally or his advocate, the court made the decision to dismiss the appeal after the respondents’ counsels complained that they were not served with the application subject matter of the scheduling conference, except Uganda.

The court decided that the conduct of the applicant in filing an application but failing to serve other parties (the respondents) except the Republic of Uganda (6th Respondent) and also failing to appear personally or by his advocate at the scheduling conference, amounts to further abuse of the court process.

Abuse of process

As a result of this, the court said that in order to avoid other possible abuse of its process in this matter, no further application relating to this matter will be entertained at the Registry, and that although it does not ordinarily award costs to a person litigating in the public Interest, the repeated abuse of the Court process by the applicant in this matter, impels it to exercise its discretion otherwise.

All EA countries implicated in the case were represented by their respective lawyers, the Republic of South Sudan.

Implementation of EPA’s would give products from the EAC member states duty-and-quota free access to the European market, but the new deal has been delayed by more than a year after Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi declined to approve the pact, citing economic and national interests.

The East African Community heads of state were supposed to meet over the issue during the February Heads of State Summit and try to resolve the stalemate but nothing came out of it.

Europe is East Africa’s largest export destination; in imports, the EU ranks third after China and India.

Though Kenya and Rwanda signed the agreement on September 1, 2016, the pact requires the signatures of all EAC members to be operational.