By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

CONSTITUTIONAL Commission Chairman Sean McWeeney is advising caution to those calling for the first of four proposed bills concerning the upcoming constitutional referendum to be made retroactive.

During the feedback session of an information forum held for the press at the Hilton, Mr McWeeney responded to concerns about the granting of citizenship to children born abroad to a Bahamian woman and foreign father not dating back to July 10, 1973.

“A lot of people complain that the bill is not retroactive and then what we should be doing is correcting, with the adjustments, that it should be retroactive from July 10, 1973 stretching back 41 years,” he said.

“My question is, does anybody have any idea how many citizens, how many persons will automatically become citizens of the Bahamas if you did that?

“That’s 41 years. I called the Department of Statistics and said, ‘You have any idea how many people we’re talking about here?’ They have absolutely no idea. So my point is, we need to be very careful before we make these decisions because with one stroke of the pen, you’d make the bill retroactive. With one stroke of the pen, we’d be making automatic citizens of the Bahamas, every single child, born to a Bahamian abroad who is married to a foreign person in the last 41 years.”

Mr McWeeney also stressed the possibility of cases being brought against the government by people to be refunded taxes they would have otherwise been exempted from if they were made Bahamian citizens retroactively.

On July 23, Prime Minister Perry Christie introduced four bills in the House of Assembly that, once passed, will lead to a referendum to amend the Constitution.

The first bill would allow a child born outside of the Bahamas to a Bahamian mother and a non-Bahamian father to have citizenship.

However, Mr Christie said the change will not operate retroactively. The government will grant Bahamian citizenship to all applicants born abroad after July 9, 1973 – and before the law changes – to a Bahamian-born mother and non-Bahamian father, subject to the exceptions and in accordance with procedures already prescribed by law.

The remaining bills (two, three and four respectively) would allow a foreign man married to a Bahamian woman to seek Bahamian citizenship and would allow an unmarried Bahamian father to pass his citizenship to a child born to a foreign mother, thus ending discrimination in the constitution based on sex.

In 2002, the Ingraham administration held a referendum which, among other things, addressed the issues of gender inequality in the Constitution.

However, the majority of the 86,961 persons who voted in that poll voted “no” to removing discrimination against women, their children and spouses from the Constitution.

The proposed referendum is slated for November 6.