Principles of Convenience

Mar 30, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Glenn Lall, the publisher of this newspaper, is fond of reminding us here at Kaieteur News that if you do not stand for something you will fall for anything. Well, if the response of the government to the courts’ pronouncements on dual citizenship is anything to go by, the government is performing one of great tumbling acts of all time.
The government challenged the no confidence motion on the basis that the vote of Charrandass Persaud, which swung the no confidence motion the Opposition’s way, was invalid. They argued that he was a dual citizen and therefore was ineligible to sit in the National Assembly. They went as far as producing evidence that he had renewed his Canadian passport and had travelled on that passport.
Under the Constitution of Guyana, a person who has sworn allegiance to a foreign state is prohibited from being elected as a member of the National Assembly. As such, the government argued that in the circumstances Charrandass Persaud’s membership of the National Assembly was invalid.
The Jamaican Constitution has a similar provision. It provides that no person shall be qualified to be appointed to parliament if that person “is by virtue of his own under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power or state.”
In the Jamaican case of Dabdoub v. Vaz, Harris and the Attorney General, Chief Justice McCalla examined the relevant constitutional provisions relating to qualification for membership of the Jamaican parliament. The Chief Justice of Jamaica in her ruling asserted that there was no problem with dual citizens who obtained that citizenship involuntarily – that is by birth or the actions of their parents on their behalf.
However, she ruled that if a person by his own act is under any acknowledgement of obedience or adherence to a foreign power that person is disqualified from sitting in parliament. The learned Chief Justice of Jamaica held that the positive act of renewing and travelling on a foreign passport constituted an act to acknowledge allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power or state, and therefore disqualifies the person from sitting in parliament.
What that ruling meant, was that it matters not if you were born overseas or received your citizenship while you were a child. So long as you took steps on your own accord to renew or travel on a foreign passport you are disqualified from sitting in Jamaica’s parliament.
Guyana’s Constitution has a similar provision as that of the Jamaican Constitution in so far as acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power or state is concerned. Therefore, so long as it can be established that the dual citizens in our National Assembly had either travelled or renewed their foreign passports, they are disqualified from being eligible to sit in the National Assembly.
There have been admissions by persons, on both sides of the House, that they are dual citizens. It is most likely, therefore, that most or all of them would have had foreign passports as adults, which they would have had to renew. It is also possible that they could have been travelling on these passports. Any of these acts would disqualify them from sitting in Guyana’s parliament.
The Chief Justice of Guyana in her decision in the challenges to the constitutionality of the no confidence motion, ruled like her colleague of Jamaica. And her ruling was upheld by all three of the judges of Guyana’s Court of Appeal.
It therefore means that it is unconstitutional for persons who are under acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign state of power to be sitting in the National Assembly. As established in the Dabdoub case, the litmus test of that acknowledgement is whether that person renewed or travelled on a foreign passport.
What is perverse is that the APNU+AFC government brought an action against Charrandass Persaud, questioning his eligibility to sit in the National Assembly on the grounds of his dual citizenship, yet are refusing to have their dual citizens resign from the National Assembly, despite the rulings of the Chief Justice of Guyana and the Court of Appeal of Guyana.
The government was successful in having the courts disqualify Charrandass Persaud’s membership of the National Assembly but see no contradiction in not demanding that its members who hold dual citizenship remove themselves from that body.
It may well be that none of the government parliamentarians who are dual citizens hold foreign passports or have ever as adults travelled on such passports. If this is the case, the government should ask these persons to swear to an affidavit.
The APNU+AFC however is not seeking to establish who in their ranks should no longer be in the National Assembly. They are saying that they are studying the issue. All their dual citizens are expected to be in the National Assembly on April 11, 2019.
The government is being disingenuous. What was right for Charrandass Persaud, should not be wrong when it comes to others in the same or similar situations.
The government has to stand on principle. Otherwise, it will fall for anything.

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