The Ministry of Citizenship under the President’s direct control is dangerous in light of Article 46

May 28, 2015 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
No matter how enamored and elated we are with regime change, it is our patriotic duty to challenge any government that moves in a dictatorial direction. I am alarmed with the creation of the ministry of the presidency. In my view, this ministry was created to undermine the Cummingsburg Accord, which specifically granted more powers to the Prime Minister.
The two ministries under this Ministry of the Presidency are problematic for our democratic future. The Ministry of Governance is a case of direct presidential interference in the Prime Minister’s mandate as per the Cummingsburg Accord to drive constitutional change. We now have the PM, Minister of Governance and Minister of Social Cohesion dealing with constitutional change.
The placement of the Ministry of Citizenship away from the PM’s domain as per the Cummingsburg Accord and under the Ministry of the Presidency and therefore, directly under the presidency is even more disturbing in light of Article 46 of the Constitution, which allows the President, not the National Assembly, to strip any citizen of his/her Guyanese citizenship if he/she acquires foreign citizenship or even worse, if the President deems some act by that Guyanese citizen is consistent with acquisition of foreign citizenship. Placing the Ministry of Citizenship within the presidency in light of the chilling potential repercussions of Article 46 is troubling. For the sake of this country’s democratic future, we must analyze this from every worst case scenario angle.
Will the presidency attempt to use this ministry to exercise presidential power to strip Guyanese of their citizenship if they are deemed critical of the new government? Would political opponents be exiled or forced to flee and then deemed stripped of their citizenship due to their presence in foreign lands? Is this part of a strategy to move this country into an autocratic future and to use this power to politically pressure the people with their citizenship?
Is there a plan afoot to prevent those from the roughly 600,000 Guyanese diaspora (and their children) – the ones who have given billions of US dollars in remittances – from returning to Guyana, particularly if oil is found? Will there be selective stripping of Guyanese of their citizenship to refashion ethnic demographics? Are there plans to use the Ministry of Citizenship to reshape ethnic composition of this country through selective immigration policies?
Now that we are going to become oil-wealthy, is there an agenda afoot to kick out illegal immigrants from Guyana (predominantly Brazilians and Chinese)? Recent commentary has suggested this is being considered. The nation needs to know because these actions will have serious geopolitical and economic repercussions to the entire country.
For starters, removing thousands of illegal Chinese and Brazilians could trigger retaliatory measures from these superpowers such as pullout of major investments and the tit for tat removal of Guyanese from these countries. In the case of Brazil, it would create a monstrous enemy at our border. Selective immigration policies for narrow political gains will deepen and intensify inter-group and intra-group ethnic conflicts within the society. Even within the very same ethnic group that swells from this selective immigration, the battle for resources will escalate and inter-group conflict will take hold.
The people of this nation come first. Indeed, in light of our oil discovery, we should carefully redesign our rules of citizenship and entry, but any ploy for political purposes is a danger to the fleeting stability of this country.
When a nation and its people have suffered for 49 years, playing crass immigration politics with the lone economic salvation they have had in five decades in oil wealth is going to ignite this country. It might actually be the missing link to bring unity among the various groups, but at the risk of significant anti-immigrant fervour, further plunging the society into chaos.
Guyanese and the children of Guyanese are inviolable. This small country of 750,000 people has no need for a separate Ministry of Citizenship, and certainly not under the heel of the Presidency. No explanation for the basis of this Ministry of Citizenship makes it even more suspicious. In light of this creation of the Ministry of Citizenship under the Ministry of the Presidency, Article 46 of the Constitution must be removed or significantly amended to allow stripping of citizenship in only the most egregious and narrow circumstances.
M. Maxwell   

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