PM muses at P.U.P. Dual Citizen Quagmire

Dean Barrow

Yolanda Schakron, the founder of Belizeans for Justice, has left the tear-stained back rooms of the social justice movement to enter the political arena.  As a replacement for Cordel Hyde, Schakron appeared to have made a seamless transition into what was considered a P.U.P. safe seat in Lake Independence. It seems, however, that the originally proposed Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, one which Belizeans for Justice opposed, is biting the novice politician in the back. It’s certainly a case of unintentional irony, but the group, which opposed many government moves, also opposed preventive detention, which was bundled in the proposed Eighth Amendment along with a dual citizenship bill. Had it been passed, it would have allowed Belizeans who also have foreign citizenship to hold public office at a national level. But that proposed amendment was discarded due to public outcry and that would have been the end of it, however, Schakron is also an American citizen. Prime Minister Dean Barrow mused over Schakron’s quagmire while strongly denying that one of his party’s new candidates also has U.S. citizenship.

Dean Barrow

“I suppose like most Belizeans anxious to see how this will play out. If she is a dual citizen, does she renounce her American citizenship? I believe that will get her over the hump. Does she try to brazen it out and nevertheless offer herself for nomination knowing then that even if she wins, she is going to be disqualified? Because cases in the Caribbean all make it inexorably clear that you cannot hold a seat in parliament if you are a dual citizen. So it will be fascinating. I do think already she is caught and her party is caught by the fact that Miss Schakron can’t say she didn’t realize the implications of being a dual citizen. This is an issue that has been ventilated here in Belize for a while now and when the U.D.P. attempted to change the constitution to remove that as a barrier to the holding of elective office, we were turned back; the people said no. My point is that this has been so much in the public consciousness that she must have known the significance of her dual nationality—not to have told her party; not to have told the people in Lake I is something that I think is going to have serious consequences for her and for her party. But we’ll wait to see if the actual proof will in fact surface knowing that there are some very intrepid journalists in these quarters, I fully expect that there is going to be proof produced. There had been some rumor about Santi Castillo. I spoke to him last night and he confirmed that he has never been a dual citizen. There was a time when he did in fact possess a green card, which he gave up long before he even got into politics. So we are positive that we do not have that particular issue confronting us any all at all.”