Since the ruling handed down by the Court of Appeal last Friday, declaring that a By-Election be held in West Portland to allow Portlanders to elect their Parliamentary representative, the Jamaican news media has been been awash with any news they can find about the two competing candidates: The JLP's Daryl Vaz and the PNP's Kenneth Rowe.
Abe Dabdoub (the PNP's losing candidate for West Portland, in the September 2007 General Election) may have enacted the battle, [in 1) questioning whether or not Daryl Vaz could be the people's elected representative, seeing that he was a US citizen at the time of his nomination and 2) by taking the matter to court] but it's Kenneth Rowe, the more winnable PNP candidate, who will wage the "war".
Mr. Kenneth Rowe has been living in Jamaica for just under the past nine (9) years and is a Commonwealth citizen, which entitles him (by Jamaica's Constitution) to sit in the House of Parliament.
What the media has been relatively silent about, however, is the amount of money that this by-election will cost Jamaican tax payers.
When questioned by journalist Cliff Hughes, on Nationwide Radio's evening programe, "Cover Story", Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica, Errol Miller, gave a rough estimate of JMD (Jamaican dollar) $30-40 million dollars (USD $340,840 - $454,454) for the cost of running the upcoming by-election on March 23,2009.
(The Electoral Commission oversees all electoral matters on island.)
With three (3) other dual-citizenship cases in the courts and the Vaz-Dabdoub case being seen as the precedent for all other dual-citizenship cases in the courts, this will be an estimated JMD $120-160 million (USD $1.37 million - $1.82 million) that will have to be paid by Jamaican taxpayers.
It has been said that there are also PNP Members of Parliament (MPs) who are dual citizens in other countries outside of the Commonwealth.
There have been calls for all MPs in this predicament to come forward, declare their hand and resign from their posts...but unfortunately, since they have already been elected by the people, the Jamaican Courts will have to determine their eligibility to sit in the House of Parliament.
With each of these cases costing Jamaican tax payers between JMD $30-40 million...Jamaica's coffers will be further depleted.
We are already heavily in debt as a country and with the global economic crisis bearing its weight down on the island, these by-elections will surely add to the depletion of what little money we have left.
Surely these offending MPs were aware of the constitutional repercussions of them being elected, before they were nominated...
...And surely they thought that their lawyers could find loop-holes in the Constitution to justify them sitting in Parliament...
(...No matter what their proclamations may have been to the contrary).
And so I believe that these offending MPs and their political parties, whether or not they lose these by-elections, should be made to fully pay for the costs of running these by-elections.
They shouldn't just be fined, as political commentator, Paul Ashley, has suggested, they should be made to pay!
For far too long, Jamaican politicians have held Jamaicans at ransom and these dual-citizenship cases are further proof of the disdain they have for us, the people they claim to represent.
Since they love us so much, let them pay for their "mistakes" or "ignorance of" the Jamaican Constitution.
Show us Mr. and Ms. Politician, just how much you care, by putting your money where your mouth is!
Nuff said! (Jamaican,meaning, enough has been said).
Sources Include
1) Article, "Back to the polls- Court of Appeal upholds Chief Justice's ruling", by Arthur Hall, Gleaner Writer - Jamaica Gleaner, February 28,2009
2) Programme, "Cover Story"- Nationwide Radio, February 27,2009