The former Minister of State Joseph Harmon has been appointed Director-General of the Ministry of the Presidency according to the Department of Public Information (DPI).
A public release from the DPI last evening stated that the former parliamentarian during a community meeting at the New Silver City Secondary School announced that he is in the process of renouncing his US citizenship.
“I wrote to [the president] and said I have commenced the process of renunciation of US citizenship and therefore by the time we come around to the next elections, I will go back into the Parliament”, Harmon explained adding that in the interim he has resigned as a parliamentarian in keeping with a ruling of the Court.
He stressed that his resignation did not express a preference for US citizenship over his seat in parliament, explaining that the process of renouncing citizenship requires a certain number of applications and is done over a period of time therefore a resignation was necessary.
Critics will see the creation of the Director-General position as a means of circumventing the prohibition on Harmon serving as Minister of State.
Both the High Court and the Court of Appeal found that constitutional provisions make those who hold citizenship in another country ineligible for election to the National Assembly.
Specifically Article 155 (1) (a) of the Constitution provides that “No person shall be qualified for election as a member of the National Assembly who is, by virtue of his or her own act, under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power or state.”
The rulings were made in the proceedings related to the vote on the no-confidence motion against the government and effectively required several members on both sides of the House to tender their resignation.
Harmon was one of four government ministers who were affected by the ruling the others were Dr Rupert Roopnaraine who was Minister of Public Service, Dominic Gaskin, who was Business Minister and Carl Greenidge, who was Foreign Affairs Minister.
Harmon has since been replaced as Minister of State by Minister Dawn Hastings-Williams while Hemraj Rajkumar has been announced as the new Minister of Business.
Almost one week after the other announcements there is still no indication about who will be responsible for the foreign affairs portfolio, which was previously held by Greenidge,
