Former parliamentarian Ronald Thwaites is calling for the urgent revival of discussions around dual citizenship in the House of Representatives, which a joint select committee began after he tabled a motion in 2010 but were never brought to a fruitful conclusion.
Thwaites’ motion would have required all members of the Lower and Upper Houses to declare their citizenship status following a series of by-elections triggered by a court ruling that the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Daryl Vaz was ineligible to sit in the Parliament as a result of his United States citizenship following the 2007 general election.
The ruling also resulted in three other JLP members of parliament – Gregory Mair, Michael Stern and Shahine Robinson – having to vacate their seats. All four were returned in by-elections after renouncing their foreign citizenship.
Personal ambition trumping policy in the PNP
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PNP playing a sad game with its business, nation s business
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Norman Horne
Two Fridays ago, another fracture was applied to the frail and wobbly body of the People’s National Party (PNP). It was another tragic act in what is either deliberate farce or accidental comedy. In the PNP’s post-election chapter, it presents another uncertain fork in the road for a badly damaged opposition party.
Based on what came out, Norman Horne is either a senator or he is not. And there is the matter of a $10-million bill he wants settled, and it all comes out in the wash among people at street level as one thing connected to the other. When it was implied in the media that Horne may still be a US citizen and was ineligible to sit in Parliament, it placed the PNP in 2020 in the hall of infamy at the very time when it had been preparing itself to be adept at hanging around in that squalid hall.