KINGSTOWN, St Vincent, (CMC) – St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves has promised that the issue of candidates being elected to Parliament while having dual citizenship will be taken to court as the campaign continues for the country’s November 27 general election.

Addressing supporters of the ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) on Tuesday night, Gonsalves, who is seeking an unprecedented sixth consecutive term as head of government, confirmed that the ULP had attempted to prevent the leader of the main Opposition New Democratic Party (NDP),  Dr Godwin Friday and the party’s East Kingstown candidate, Fitz Bramble, from being nominated as candidates for the elections because of their Canadian citizenship.

Friday, who is also the Opposition leader, is seeking election to a sixth consecutive term as the parliamentary representative for the Northern Grenadines, which he has been representing since 2001.  Bramble is seeking a second five-year term in office.

Both Bramble and Friday were born in St Vincent and the Grenadines but obtained Canadian citizenship as adults.

Speaking on his weekly radio programme on Wednesday, Gonsalves told radio listeners that the two Opposition legislators “have a huge problem”  that he defended the decision of “registered electors” to make the objection to their nomination.

He said section 26 of the Constitution states that you are disqualified if you are “by your own voluntary act, under the acknowledgement of allegiance or adherence to a foreign power or state, that foreign power being Canada.

“That is repeated word for word in the Representation of  the People’s Act at section 35,”  Gonsalves said, adding that this provision, along with another one about a Commonwealth citizen had been considered in a case involving for the former St. Kitts-Nevis prime minister, Dr Denzil Douglas, who had been granted a diplomatic passport by Dominica a few years ago.

“The court held that the mere possession of the passport, all be it a diplomatic one, pointed clearly to an act, voluntarily by Denzil Douglas to be under acknowledgement of allegiance…obedience or adherence of a foreign power or state,” Gonsalves said.

Gonsalves, an attorney, said prior to the Douglas case there were varied legal  opinions in the Caribbean, but “in our jurisdiction in 2020, the Court of Appeal determined that  the mere holding of the passport, not even citizenship indicated this.

“So the law has now  been made crystal clear…but you would have to have evidence,”  Gonsalves said, noting that by his own statement made in Parliament recently, Dr Friday has admitted to having the Canadian passport proudly in his front pocket.

Gonsalves said in the case of Bramble, while he did not make a similar statement in Parliament, “there are witnesses that we have that Bramble told people he is a Canadian citizen and he has a Canadian passport”.

Gonsalves said he has also been informed that when Bramble was interviewed by the Returning Officer during Monday’s Nomination Day, “he admitted that he is a citizen of  Canada”.

On Monday, unsigned documents began circulating on social media, addressed to the returning officers in the Northern Grenadians and East Kingstown, claiming that the nomination of the two opposition candidates had been challenged.

Friday later appeared in a video on social media saying that his nomination was successful.

“Of course, my opponents … tried some dirty tricks. They wanted to knock me off the ballot. They wanted to try and get me out of the way before you had a chance to vote. But it didn’t succeed,” he said.

Friday, a lawyer, said he and his legal team pushed back against the efforts to block his nomination.

“The nomination process is complete. We proceed to the elections on the 27th. If you want to beat me, come on the 27th, that is the day that you can come and try to knock me out, and you ain’t going to succeed, because that is the day of reckoning, and we shall overcome, and the people of this constituency and the country will have a change that we so desperately need,” he said.