By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

DESPITE suggestions by Free National Movement (FNM) MP Dr Andre Rollins that the government should delay the long awaited constitutional referendum until after the next general election, FNM Chairman Michael Pintard countered yesterday that the party’s official position is to work in conjunction with the government to make the vote a success.

In a statement to the press, Dr Rollins predicted on Sunday that the referendum will likely fail because of the government’s “extreme unpopularity.”

This came days party Leader Dr Hubert Minnis told The Tribune he supports all four Constitutional Amendment Bills.

Mr Pintard said Dr Minnis will allow party members to vote their conscience and speak their minds despite the party’s official position.

“No whip will be on with respect to this matter,” he said. “No gag order will be on them.”

Asked if he was concerned that inflammatory rhetoric from his party could doom the referendum, Mr Pintard said: “The leader has been clear: they can vote their conscience and no gag order is on them.”

“What concerns the FNM, over the course of the last several months has been Dr Bernard Nottage and others giving the distinct impression that delays have been had because of the government’s attempt to ensure the FNM is on board with this matter when in reality the PLP did not have the numbers within their own ranks to get the bills passed,” he said. “If they did have them prior to having people leave their party they would’ve been in a clear position to have this matter be dealt with by now.”

Long Island MP Loretta Butler-Turner also said she still wants the government to hold the referendum, although she said the Christie administration should apologise for whatever role it played in causing the first constitutional referendum to fail in 2002.

“They need to make a public apology letting them know they were wrong for opposing it and that it was a disservice to women at home and abroad,” she said. “But I don’t share sentiments that there ought to be a delay with the referendum.”

The gender equality referendum has been postponed four times since 2013.

The four Constitutional Amendment Bills were tabled in the House of Assembly in 2014 and have been languishing in the committee stage since then.

The first bill would enable a child born outside the Bahamas to a Bahamian woman and a non-Bahamian father to have automatic Bahamian citizenship at birth. However, the government does not plan to have the clause operate retroactively.

The second bill would allow a Bahamian woman who marries a foreign man to secure for him the same access to Bahamian citizenship that a Bahamian man has always enjoyed under the Constitution in relation to his foreign wife.

The third bill seeks to remedy the one area of the Bahamas’ Constitution that discriminates against men based on gender.

The bill would give an unwed Bahamian father the same right to pass citizenship to his child that a Bahamian woman has always had under the Constitution in relation to a child born to her out of wedlock, once paternity is proved.

The fourth bill aims to remove discrimination from the Constitution based on sex, being male or female.