Members of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) who hold dual citizenship status will not attend future Parliamentary sittings, Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo, has revealed.
Speaking to members of the media at his Church Street Office, the former President revealed that Opposition Chief Whip, Gail Teixeira, and PPP MP, Odinga Lumumba, will not resign from Parliament but will relinquish their foreign citizenships. As for Opposition MP, Adrian V. Anamayah, he is still to discuss his status and the way forward with Jagdeo.
The former President said that he will ensure that his MPs show respect for the Constitution and he registered his condemnation of the Government’s intention to have its dual citizen ministers make an appearance at the next sitting of the National Assembly.
The Opposition Leader said that both the Appellate Court and the High Court expressed the view that dual citizens cannot sit in the National Assembly and this perspective is also supported in the Constitution. He said, too, that the courts further ruled that there would need to be a special process to displace the dual citizen MPs.
Jagdeo said, “But, at least morally, if the courts rule on this matter, then dual citizens should not be sitting in the Parliament and they should resign from being ministers too.”
The PPP General Secretary said he was also shocked to learn that the Government’s Chief Whip, Amna Ally, was boldly stating that all the dual citizen MPs are going to be at the next Parliamentary sitting. He reminded that she was one of the persons preaching that the supporting vote of former AFC Member, Charrandass Persaud, for the Opposition’s no confidence motion could not be counted since he is a dual citizen. “It is duplicitous and shows that they lack decency,” Jagdeo expressed.
In addition to this, Jagdeo said that the Parliamentary Opposition will abstain from any future sittings as it has filed a case with the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to review the Appellate court’s recent judgment that the no confidence motion was not validly passed. Jagdeo reasoned that if the CCJ overturns the Appellate Court’s ruling then everything the government did after March 21 would have been illegal.
“As such, we don’t want to be complicit in the illegalities of the government,” expressed the Opposition Leader.
