APNU MPs’ Dual Citizenship is none of the AFC’s business – Cathy Hughes

Jan 17, 2019 News

---

Alliance for Change (AFC) Vice Chair, Cathy Hughes, has said that the AFC is not challenging the eligibility of Members of Parliament from its coalition partner, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), to hold office.
She said that asking for information on their nationality would be an infringement of their personal business.
Hughes fielded questions from the media, yesterday, on whether the AFC would hold APNU MPs accountable for breaching the Constitution, by having dual citizenship status, as the party did with former AFC MP, Charrandass Persaud.
During the press conference held at the AFC’s Centre for Change in Kitty, yesterday, Hughes told members of the media that her party had taken note of speculation by the general public that there are AFC MPs who have breached Article 155 of the Constitution by swearing allegiance to a foreign state.
In response to this, Hughes said that “… none of its 11 MPs has sworn allegiance to any foreign state. Ten of the party’s MPs are citizens of Guyana only. The other MP, Minister Dominic Gaskin, was born in the United Kingdom but is a citizen of Guyana by descent.

“The issue of renouncing citizenship does not apply to Guyanese who are born in another country. Therefore, Mr. Gaskin constitutionally sits as a duly elected MP without any hindrance or issue.”
The AFC panel, which included Chairman of the AFC, Khemraj Ramjattan, was asked whether it noted the precedent a challenge of Persaud’s validity as a MP would set for other sitting MPs, both, on the government’s side and that of the Opposition.
Ramjattan said that if the Chief Justice rules in favour of the government on the challenge of Persaud’s eligibility as a MP, then should the ruling have a domino effect on other MPs, the party would respect such implications.
He noted, however, that the government is only currently interested in challenging Persaud’s eligibility due to his “treacherous, egregious betrayal” of the AFC.
The panel was asked whether the AFC considers itself responsible for holding its coalition partner, the APNU, accountable for breaches of the Constitution, as is the case with sitting APNU MPs who, like Persaud, have dual citizenship.
Hughes said that it is not the responsibility of the party to hold individuals accountable, but the individuals themselves.
She said, “There is no way that we could say that a Member of Parliament does not know the requirement of the Constitution, especially a lawyer. If somebody is going to deliberately deceive, there is no protection for that. Your citizenship, like the day you were born, like many other bodies of personal information is valid, and is personal to an individual.”
“Therefore, if somebody sets out to deceive, I don’t see what else you could do, other than maybe put in place some system by which they have to prove that they don’t have citizenship in another country.
“That, in itself, is a challenge because everybody knows that, in today’s world, where you want to protect the integrity of your personal information that, quite often, it probably would be illegal to ask.
“So, we come to the table with the assumption that you know what is required; you know the integrity of the position. Therefore, we would take at face value what the prospective MP would give as an answer to that question.”

Ramjattan said that even though he and others knew that dual citizenship rendered an individual ineligible to serve as an MP, he did not raise the issue before because of the precedent that was set by politicians from the PPP since Guyana gained independence.
“When I was in the PPP, I knew that Gail Teixeira was a Canadian citizen. I knew that Janet Jagan was an American-born citizen. But, because of a kind of practice that allowed the thing to just go on – she was a Parliamentarian since independence – what do you do?”
He stated that the impetus for the specific challenge against Persaud is the fact that the coalition wants to invalidate the No-Confidence motion which was carried on December 21, 2018.
“The scenario here, however, is that we are, in a sense, arguing a case in which that Charrandass [Persaud]’s vote could be vitiated.
He said that the challenge of Persaud’s eligibility to serve as MP is actually because the government is “utilising whatever arguments the lawyers are going to come up with. So, that is how it’s going to be done. Same thing in Trinidad and Jamaica, [the arguments were brought up when] necessary.”
It was raised that the government is targeting Persaud on the basis of breach of Constitution, even with the knowledge that there are other sitting MPs in the coalition who are in similar breach.
Ramjattan responded, “You know, this politics is not easy. You can say that, but I want to be frank with you. When you get someone as treacherous as that, with such duplicity, it was far more egregious than what we have here.”

---

---