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.... Letters & Opinion

02nd September 2010
Dual Citizenship vs National Anthems - A real Caribbean conundrum

The matter of dual citizenship is beginning to haunt Caribbean politics. In St. Kitts and Nevis, Jamaica and Dominica, elected parliamentarians, including a Prime Minister, have had to or been told they must face the courts to straighten out their citizenship status, to decide which passport they will hold on to and which flag they will pay allegiance to. The biggest such case is the recent decision by a Dominica High Court judge that the country’s Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, should answer questions in court about how he became a citizen of France.
The issue is now being raised everywhere else, including here.
When I first heard the local TV report, I thought the reporter had discovered that Allen Chastanet is a citizen of the USA or Canada -- or both -- and that his status was being challenged by the Opposition. But no. It revealed that the celebrated American martial arts actor, Stephen Seagal, has a St. Lucian passport. HTS talk show host Claudius Francis questioned how the popular American actor could have a St. Lucian passport when he’s not a St. Lucian citizen. That’s a story by itself, which I can hardly wait to see followed-up by the local press. But, for this article, my focus is on Prime Minister Skerrit and the the questions he has to answer in court.
First of all, there are several factors to be considered up front. One is that “a citizen” and “a national” are not the same. One can be a citizen without being a national of a particular country -- and vice versa.
Secondly, in the Skerrit case there are several questions to be asked: In all practical circumstances, for all intents and purposes, is there anything that Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has said or done to classify or defend himself as a real and true, bona fide citizen or national of France? Does he have and use a French passport to travel? Does he pay allegiance to France? Does he sing the Marseillaise at public functions? Does he refuse to pay allegiance to Her Majesty The Queen? Does he pay tax in Martinique or Guadeloupe?
Take a good look at the Skerrit case and compare it with others in Jamaica and St. Kitts and Nevis and there’s one fundamental difference. In the first two countries mentioned, the elected parliamentarians who had questions to answer had knowingly, as adults, gone through, over a number of years, the process of applying and qualifying for citizenship of the other country in question. In Skerrit’s case, however, he became a French citizen after his Dominican parents applied for and secured that status for him as a child, so that he could live with them in Guadeloupe, where they resided.
Clearly, Skerrit didn’t personally decide to pay allegiance to France in the first place. As far as I know, Skerrit hasn’t meaningfully exercised his acquired French citizenship in any part of France, in any way that will bring his loyalty to Dominica into question.
So, if that’s the case, you may ask, why is Prime Minister Skerrit being sent to court? The answer: politics. His party decimated the opposition in the recent polls and after a long and heady election hangover, the opposition has resorted to one of those post-election legal manoeuvres aimed at scoring a legal point or two. After all, do you think the opposition only just realized, after the election, that Skerrit grew up and went to school in Guadeloupe?
Skerrit has been asked by the judge to answer his name in court because, legally, he has a case to answer. After all, he still has those French papers and is probably still registered as a citizen of one of France’s Caribbean colonies. Skerrit apparently never bothered to renounce his French citizenship after becoming an adult and returning to his native Dominica, for whatever reason or reasons. Yet, I don’t think he’s in trouble. Why? Because if you look closely at what the laws, the lawyers and the judges have been saying on this issue, you will spot the differences in his case.
The petition by the opposition member against the Prime Minister states that Mr Skerrit, ”at the time of his nomination and at the material time, was a person, by his own act, under acknowledgement of allegiance and/or adherence to a foreign power of state, namely the Republic of France.”
A former Dominica Prime Minister, Edison James, who revealed what he knew of the Prime Minister’s citizenship, taunted him during the last general election campaign, saying that “If he (Skerrit) became a citizen of that country by his own free will… if it is not his parents who did it for him, then that person is not eligible to be a (parliamentary) candidate.”
Former OECS Chief Justice Brian Alleyne, himself a former Dominica Cabinet Minister, made it even clearer (to me, at least). He said: “If a person has done an act which indicated allegiance such as using a foreign passport and therefore asserting his allegiance to this country or, for instance, applying for and receiving a passport as an adult, that is an act of allegiance which would fall, apparently, under the provisions of the constitution.”
 
 

Again I ask: Can those taking Prime Minister Skerrit to court prove that he has used his French passport to travel, to vote in France or any of its overseas colonies, or in any other way indicate that he had asserted his inherited allegiance to France?
The political opposition in Dominica may ask why Prime Minister Skerrit never renounced his French citizenship. He may reply that he never thought he had to because he never considered himself a French citizen after growing up. They may ask why he didn’t declare his French citizenship before the elections and he can say its because he was never legally required to.
But that’s the kinda stuff court cases are made of. You can never accurately predict the outcome of legal matters. I might consider the case against PM Skerrit as a mere political irritant, but that may not be the view of the judge or judges who may hear the case. Case in point: The last Pakistani military leader, General Musharraf, said at the beginning that the strike by lawyers calling for reinstatement of the Chief Justice he’d fired that it was “a mere irritant”. But, within weeks, the strikes mushroomed into a national movement that eventually forced him out of office and brought an end to his long years of strong military rule. Another case in point: I felt Kenny Anthony couldn’t lose the first Rochamel case while in office, but the original judge felt different and she ruled against him. He only won after the Court of Appeal upheld his appeal.
Thing is, I’m no lawyer. But I’ll bet that Skerrit has some good answers ready. He and I haven’t talked at all, but I know that the former Dominica Education Minister isn’t a fool. Nor is this the first time the opposition, unable to beat him at the polls, has been trying to legally get him and his Labour Party out of office through the courts.
So, you may ask: how come Earl Bousquet last week warned the local press about the dangers of trying cases in public before they’re heard and he’s now pontificating on the likely outcome of a case yet to be heard in Dominica? My answer: The cases last week were criminal matters here involving some of the worst crimes known to humanity – (brutal) murder and (multiple)rape; the Skerrit case is about a possible legal infraction, lapse or infelicity that is neither criminal, nor punishable by jail. Besides -- if I may say, without being accused of being parochial or disinterested in neighbourly matters -- Dominica is not my jurisdiction – and Dominicans aren’t my intended audience.
The lawyers will tell us different – and so will those who would relish a court result against the Dominica Prime Minister, whatever the political consequences, if any. But, in the end, as always, there are lessons for every country in the Caribbean where the matter of allegiance to another country arises.
A major lesson all countries must have learned by now is that each country has to make its position clear before every general election or by-election, so that potential candidates can know, up front, that they are required to declare their status ahead of selection or registration. In this case, St. Lucia is offering the simple solution – where it does not yet exist -- of adopting the principle of having the question posed on the related application form.
From what they’ve said on TV, the local Electoral Commissioners know that the Registration Form for election candidates in use at the moment does not ask them or require them to state whether they are citizens of, or in sworn allegiance to any other country. Will the local form be changed? We don’t know yet, but it would be a good step if it were recommended by the Commission and adopted by the House of Assembly ahead of the next general elections.
That would certainly avoid many embarrassments. For sure. (Responses to embousquet@gmail.com)

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