Time is right to challenge Friday, Bramble’s election — Gonsalves 

The ideal time to file election petitions against Prime Minister Godwin Friday and Minister of Foreign Affairs Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble is now, says Opposition Leader Ralph Gonsalves.

Two candidates in the November 2025 general election for the Unity Labour Party (ULP), which Gonsalves leads, have each filed a petition challenging Friday and Bramble’s qualification to contest the polls, because they also hold Canadian citizenship.

“They are trying to prepare a political ground why is it done now. Well, we said to the people that it would be done …  and we outlined why we would do it this time for the simple reason that the law had been clarified after the case in St Kitts and Nevis, the case involving Denzil Douglas,” Gonsalves said on Star Radio on Monday. 

He added that lawyers who were earlier unsure of the outcome of such a case were now advising that Friday and Bramble could lose, the opposition leader said. 

In a judgment handed down on March 12, 2020, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court of Appeal ordered that Denzil Douglas, then leader of the opposition St. Kitts and Nevis Labour Party, vacate his seat in the national assembly with immediate effect. 

The court held that Douglas, through his application for, receipt of and use of a Dominican diplomatic passport, breached Section 28(1)(a) of the St. Kitts and Nevis Constitution. 

The court also ruled that Douglas had become a person “who, by virtue of his own act, is under an acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to the Commonwealth of Dominica in breach of Section 28(1)(a) of the Constitution”.

The ULP is arguing that Friday, who has been MP for the Northern Grenadines since 2001 and Brmable, who has been representing East Kingstown since 2020, are not qualified to be elected to Parliament. 

However, legal scholars have noted that, unlike other Commonwealth Caribbean constitutions, the Vincentian supreme law says that a person is not qualified to be a representative or senator unless they are a Commonwealth citizen. 

The petitions were filed in the lead up to the November 27, 2025, General Elections by 

The ULP candidates for the Northern Grenadines, Carlos Williams and for East Kingstown, Luke Browne, filed the petitions after losing in the Nov. 27, 2025, election.

They have cited Section 26(1)(a) of the  Constitution of SVG, which also states that no person shall be qualified or appointed representative or senator if they are by virtue of their own act under an acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience of adherence to a foreign power or state. 

Gonsalves said that he had been advised to challenge Friday’s and Bramble’s eligibility to contest an election.

 However, the lawyers who were contacted at the time felt that the law was not clear. 

“But now, there was clarification of the law,” the opposition leader said. 

He said that there was a very serious matter to be tried and that it was a matter of representational politics. 

He said it is understandable for an ordinary Vincentian to want to have dual citizenship, or for someone to become a citizen of SVG while holding citizenship of another country.

Gonsalves, however, said it is a different matter when someone who holds citizenship of another country wants to become the prime minister or foreign minister of SVG or to represent the people in Parliament. 

“Those are vital questions to be determined,” he said. 

“I can’t get it that some individuals, because of their political partisanship, do not see just off the top of it, you can’t have dual loyalties,” the opposition leader said.