Citizenship

Editorial
Stabroek News
October 31, 2000


Many Guyanese citizens believe that they are entitled to also hold citizenship of another country with no adverse consequences. That is not the case.

Article 46 of the l980 Constitution which repeated Article 28 of the l966 Constitution reads as follows: "(l) If the President is satisfied that any citizen of Guyana has at any time after 25th May, l966, acquired by registration, naturalisation or other voluntary and formal act (other than marriage) the citizenship of any country other than Guyana, the President may by order deprive that person of his citizenship.

(2) If the President is satisfied that any citizen of Guyana has at any time after 25th May, l966, voluntarily claimed and exercised in a country other than Guyana any rights available to him under the law of that country, being rights accorded exclusively to its citizens, the President may by order deprive that person of his citizenship".

In other words, if you become a citizen of another country or exercise rights of citizenship of that country you can be deprived of your citizenship. Though there are no known incidents of a Guyanese President having exercised this power it is very undesirable in principle that in a country in which virtually every Guyanese citizen has a close relative who lives overseas and has acquired citizenship there that fact alone should make them liable to be deprived of citizenship.

This newspaper had urged the Constitution Reform Commission to introduce dual citizenship. This was not done. It is not a matter of only academic interest. In one West Indian country which had inherited a constitution with a similar clause from the British a motion was filed in court challenging a senior candidate for parliament on the basis that he had acquired citizenship of another country and should therefore be deprived of his citizenship. It is not inconceivable that some of our parliamentarians or senior public officials might be vulnerable to similar challenges.

One would hope that this is one of the issues that will be revisited by the permanent constitutional reform body to be introduced by the amendments to the constitution that will soon be passed. A country that has suffered as much emigration as Guyana and which hopes to encourage some of its overseas citizens, who hold foreign citizenship, to return and settle here should not be satisfied with the existing constitutional provisions.


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