President of the Bahamas Christian Council Bishop Delton Fernander.
~ Fernander suggests government will try to ram bill through ~
NASSAU, The Bahamas--On Sunday, Bahamas Christian Council President Bishop Delton Fernander expressed concern over the Davis administration’s plan to achieve citizenship changes via legislative means after two referendums to effect gender equality in the country’s constitution failed over a decade apart.
“I think it is the wrong route,” Fernander told The Nassau Guardian in response to Attorney General Ryan Pinder foreshadowing that citizenship changes will be achieved via legislation prior to the end of the year.
Fernander added, “Obviously, if the legislative route could have been done, why did we go through two referendums? We continue not to do the hard work when we want to change positions on legislative matters. Rather than teaching and preparing people to understand what you are trying to achieve, we are busy trying to just ram things through. I have said this publicly. I believe it is the wrong approach.”
Fernander said whether one is trying to grow a nation or move forward with something they feel is “progressive”, the work must be done to try to convince the electorate of the value of the changes proposed. He said there were attempts to force the referendums on the people in 2002, and again in 2016.
“You either have to present your case, convince the people, and change hearts and minds, rather than just changing legislation,” he said.
“What does that accomplish? It is important enough to spend time on why we are doing it and what it is in aid of. And it has always been the case that the referendums have failed because when the consultation committees tell you [some of the questions proposed – Ed.] are not going to work, [those questions] were still included. We have heard this over and over again.
“Do we even know what the legislation is they are trying to bring? We will speak out. We wait for the legislation and wait for the approach. Sometimes, these things are trial balloons and they want to see just how much kickback they get,” he added.
Fernander suggested government is being poorly advised on the issue. On Thursday, Pinder said the citizenship bill was among the priority items on the government’s legislative agenda. Opposition to the citizenship bill could come from various quarters.
In April, A. Loftus Roker, a former immigration minister, who is a signatory to the 1973 constitution, told The Nassau Guardian, “That will not work because you cannot alter the constitution by ordinary law. They want to avoid going to a referendum, but that is the only way they can alter the constitution. That is the problem.”
While Roker said it is important to see exactly what government is proposing, whenever it brings the citizenship bill, he predicted such a measure will face legal challenge.
“You can be sure of challenge,” he said. “Once you start that, you can change the whole constitution by ordinary legislation, which means you are not getting the majority of Bahamians agreeing with changing our constitution and the constitution says that the Bahamians must decide if they want to change the constitution, the Bahamian people, by a referendum.”
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But former Attorney General Sean McWeeney, who chaired the last Constitutional Review Commission, which reported in 2013, also said in April that the constitution was never intended to exhaustively provide for all of the circumstances in which you can obtain Bahamian citizenship.
Article 13(a) of the constitution states: “Parliament may make provision (a) for the acquisition of citizenship of The Bahamas by persons who do not become citizens of The Bahamas by virtue of the provisions of this chapter…”
On Sunday, Lynn Holowesko, who co-chaired the Say Yes Committee along with Sharon Lady Wilson in 2016, said she favours bringing the citizenship bill.
“I am in favour of the legislative route because I think that there has been too much made of the citizenship question by some politicians and it has become a political football,” Holowesko said.
“Both I and my co-chair experienced that when we were working on the Say Yes campaign. People were not willing to listen. They had answers before we had even asked questions. It was really, very, very discouraging.”
Holowesko noted that there are also those who have religious views supporting the subservience of women, who believe that women, therefore, should not be allowed to pass citizenship.
“People are not willing to change their ingrained points of view whether it is political or whether they have interpreted it as a religious belief,” she said. “Whatever it is, it did not work then, I do not think [a referendum] will work again. As I said, I think it has been politicised too much. I am quite happy to support the attorney general’s point of view on this.”
While the citizenship bill has not yet been circulated for consultation, the attorney general gave some indication of matters that will be addressed when he revealed it will address “the equality of the transmission of citizenship for both men and women”.
The first proposed amendment in the 2016 referendum would have allowed children born abroad to obtain Bahamian citizenship from either their Bahamian father or mother, in those circumstances where the other parent is not Bahamian. Right now, only Bahamian men are entitled to pass their Bahamian citizenship to their children born abroad in these situations.
The second amendment would have enabled a Bahamian woman who marries a non-Bahamian man to secure for him the same ability to apply for Bahamian citizenship – following the same steps and subject to the same considerations – currently afforded to a Bahamian man married to a non-Bahamian woman.
The third amendment would have corrected the provision in the constitution that currently discriminates against men. The change would have meant that an unmarried Bahamian man could pass on his Bahamian citizenship to a child fathered with a non-Bahamian woman, if he is able to prove by DNA evidence that he is the father. This right currently belongs only to women.
Had voters approved it, Article 26 of the constitution would have been updated, so that it would become unconstitutional for Parliament to pass any laws that discriminate based on sex, which was defined as “male or female”.
In a statement on the results at the time of the defeat, then chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), the late Bradley Roberts, said, “The PLP remains committed to the principle of equality for all Bahamians under the law. We do so because it is consistent with our core values and the foundational principles upon which the PLP was built and thrived.”
The 2016 referendum was perceived by some as a do-over of the referendum held on February 27, 2002. Voters were asked whether they approved of the removal of gender discrimination from the constitution, the creation of a national commission to monitor the standards of teachers, the creation of an independent parliamentary commissioner, the creation of an independent election boundaries commission, and the increase of the retirement ages of judges from 60 to 65 (or 68 to 72 for appellate judges).
All five questions were rejected by voters, with between 62.8% and 70.9% voting against. ~ The Nassau Guardian ~
