NDP’s position same as 2009; Gonsalves’ has shifted — lawyer

Prominent lawyer and former New Democratic Party (NDP) senator Kay Bacchus-Baptiste says that the changes that NDP government wants to make to the Constitution are consistent with its position in 2009, when it convinced Vincentians to vote against proposed changes to the supreme law.

The NDP has maintained that the Constitution provides for Commonwealth citizens, rather than just Vincentians, to qualify to contest general elections in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).

In 2009, during the Constitutional reform referendum, then prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves shared that view and advocated that the Constitution be changed.

However, since the lead-up to the November 2025 general election, in which Vincentians rejected his 25-year-old government, Gonsalves has been claiming that Commonwealth countries are foreign powers.

He has argued that Prime Minister Godwin Friday and Minister of Foreign Affairs Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble were not qualified to be candidates in the November 2025 general elections because they also hold Canadian citizenship, which they acquired by their own acts.

Gonsalves’ Unity Labour Party (ULP) has filed two petitions asking the court to rule that Friday –who has been representing the Northern Grenadines since 2001, and Bramble — who was first elected MP for East Kingstown in 2020 — do not qualify to sit in Parliament.

In 2009, the NDP, then in opposition, campaigned against changes to the Constitution, including one that would have altered who could qualify to run for office.

“And the referendum on the whole Constitution was defeated; badly. So, the people in St. Vincent and Grenadines wanted to keep it that way,” Bacchus-Baptiste told iWitness News on Wednesday.

“And there are numerous Commonwealth citizens who vote in St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” she said.

The ULP’s election petitions are slated for trial in June. However, the NDP government is asking Parliament to approve during Tuesday’s meeting an amendment to the Constitution to define “foreign power” to mean a state that is not a member of the Commonwealth.

With the NDP’s 14-1 supermajority in Parliament, the amendment is expected to pass. Additionally, no referendum is needed to make the change as it is not an entrenched provision of the Constitution.  

Gonsalves, the opposition leader and head of the ULP, and other ULP spokespeople have accused the NDP government of taking out an insurance policy in the face of the legal challenge.

Unlike what he said in 2017 in connection to petitions filed by the NDP challenging the results of the 2015 general election, Gonsalves said on Wednesday that the court should be allowed to decide the case.

Speaking to iWitness News before Gonsalves’ comments on radio, Bacchus-Baptiste said her understanding was that “what is being proposed is just a clarification of the law.

“It is not an alteration of the law. It doesn’t alter the substantial provision of the law. What it does is clarify what the law means — making it clear — because the law is very certain in what it has said about you have to be a Commonwealth citizen in order to run. That is what the law says.”

Bacchus-Baptiste, however, said that the definition section of the Constitution did not make clear the meaning of “a foreign power”.

“And that is all they’re doing: clarifying the law,” Bacchus-Baptiste said, adding that the intention of the framers of the Constitution is clear.

“I have no doubt about that. I have made many pronouncements on it. I’ve been on the radio station, I’ve written about it. So, I have no doubt about what the law means and what it intends.

“But we can agree that the Constitution did not include a definition of what a foreign power or state is, and that is all they’re doing is altering the definition section.”

She said the framers of the Constitution “absolutely” assumed that the meaning of the term “foreign power” in the Constitution was understood.

“‘Commonwealth citizen’ is a clear definition,” Bacchus-Baptiste said. “Canada is part of the Commonwealth. So, it is clear.

“The law says that you have to be a Commonwealth citizen, which is different from, like the Dominica constitution, and the other one is St. Kitts, I think, which says ‘a citizen of Dominica’, or ‘a citizen of St. Kitts’.”

The lawyer was referring to cases often cited in support of the ULP’s argument, although the SVG Constitution says a person contesting a general election must be a commonwealth citizen and not necessarily a Vincentian.

This was Gonsalves’ interpretation in 2009, when he told voters in the referendum.

“At the moment, all Commonwealth citizens with one year’s residence in this country can run for elections,” Gonsalves had said as he tried to convince Vincentian to vote for the proposed changes to the Constitution.

“But in the new law, in the new Constitution, only those from CARICOM, OECS countries, which are in the Commonwealth. At the moment, a man can come here from Nigeria and spend a year and run for office, a man can come here from England, from Canada, and live one year and can run for office,” Gonsalves had said.

Bacchus-Baptiste told iWitness News on Wednesday:

“In our law, it says a Commonwealth citizen. That alone is a massive distinction that would be difficult to get over. And I do agree that enough has been said, and it should be clarified, because even Dr. Gonsalves himself had said that a Commonwealth citizen can run; he had said it over and over and wanted to amend it.

“Now he’s changing his mind or pretending that that is not what the law says. It says that, and I commend this government for clarifying it by simply including in the definition section something that was omitted. That is what they’re doing and I commend them.”