(BBC) The controversial subject of the dual nationality of elected officials is haunting another Caribbean country.
A court in Dominica has ruled that Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit and Education Minister Peter Saint Jean will face trial on charges that their election to parliament in 2009 was invalid as a consequence of their dual citizenship.
The issue has already clouded politics in St Kitts and Nevis and Jamaica, where four MPs have faced legal action for the same reasons.
In his 65-page ruling, Judge Errol Thomas concluded that there were substantial grounds for a court to hear the petitions against the two Dominica MPs.
A member of the opposition United Workers Party (UWP), Maynard Joseph, had petitioned the court to disqualify Mr Skerrit on the grounds that he “at the time of his nomination and at the material time, was a person by his own act under an acknowledgement of allegiance and/or adherence to a foreign power of state, namely the Republic of France.”
Child citizen
Mr Skerrit publicly acknowledged his French citizenship when the matter was raised during the run-up to December’s general election.
During campaigning, a former UWP Prime Minister, Edison James, had taunted Mr Skerrit on the subject.
He said; “Under our constitution if a person becomes a national, a citizen of a foreign land and is under allegiance to that foreign country and he became a citizen of that country by his own free will…it is not his parents who did it for him, then that person cannot be eligible to be a (parliamentary) candidate.”
Mr Skerrit said he became a citizen of France as a child – not through his own deliberate judgement.
Dominica became a republic in 1978.
A smaller opposition group, the Dominica Freedom Party, had also called on the Electoral Commission to investigate Mr Skerrit’s eligibility to contest the vote.
But the board approved the nomination and the prime minister went on to lead his Dominica Labour Party (DLP) to a resounding victory 18-3 victory over the UWP.
In addition to the nationality suits, the UWP filed motions to challenge the results in five constituencies claiming irregularities, bribery and fraud.
Former senior Eastern Caribbean High Court Judge, Sir Brian Alleyne, who is a former Dominica cabinet minister, said Mr Skerrit faced losing his seat and the prime ministership if the opposition could prove he was under allegiance to France.
Foreign passport
Sir Brian told BBC Caribbean that it was not so much dual nationality but “allegiance” to a foreign state which was the issue under the island’s constitution.
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 foreign 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.”
Sir Brain also pointed that, should Mr Skerrit lose the case and a by-election were ordered, he could contest that vote were he to renounce his French citizenship.
