Robert Buddan, Contributor

Bruce Golding says it is a constitutional absurdity that a Commonwealth citizen can vote and be elected to the Jamaican Parliament after spending only a year in Jamaica, while a Jamaican citizen who lives overseas and is a citizen of another country cannot be elected here.

There are many political and economic absurdities in our world. Take this prime example. A foreigner, Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth can, and is encouraged to invest, that is, buy and own any amount of prime agricultural land and mineral resources, beachfront property and assets of all kinds which most Jamaicans cannot afford to own, but at the same time those same Jamaicans can constitutionally vote and be elected to the country's Parliament and become prime minister. In other words, one has to be a Jamaican citizen to be prime minister but anyone can own Jamaica. Which is the more desired right?

I suspect that most Jamaicans, here or overseas, would prefer to enjoy the means, influence and right under international law to enjoy economic wealth in Jamaica with the same legal capacity as a non-Jamaican, than be elected to the Parliament of Jamaica, if given the choice.

No economic power

In fact, the Jamaican diaspora has once again turned down the chance to have a seat in the Jamaican Senate reserved for one of its representatives, but continues to show great interest in enjoying economic opportunities here.

The resulting absurdity of all this is that we have the political power we craved at independence but not the economic power we also need to make independence more meaningful.

The balance between political and economic rights favours the Jamaican citizen over his diaspora counterpart who is a dual citizen in the case of political rights but favours the non-Jamaican, non-citizen in the case of economic rights.

Initialled agreement

That sounds absurd but that is what liberalisation on a global scale (neoliberalism) means. It is even more absurd that Golding's government has initialled an agreement with the European Union, the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which recognises a 'national treatment' principle. This principle says that all foreign investors must be given the same treatment as a national of the country. A government cannot reserve certain investment opportunities for nationals, sell them land at a special price, reserve divestment for them, give them any special tax discounts, and so on.

According to eminent Jamaican economist, Professor Norman Girvan, this principle of national treatment is entrenched in many parts of the EPA. He says, "This rules out possibilities for governments to deliberately foster the formation and expansion of local and regional firms, and of small and medium enterprises in order to compete in global markets; which is one of the main objectives of the CSME." He's saying that CARICOM companies won't be able to enjoy any advantage as they try to compete with European firms within CARICOM. This is because Europeans have the resources and the right of national treatment to get anything that a Caribbean citizen is entitled to. This brings neoliberalism to its highest point of absurdity.

Professor Girvan explains that, "National treatment requires that EU firms that are exporting, supplying services or investing in the Caribbean, be treated exactly the same as local firms.

"They expressly forbid governments from providing protection or any kind of preferential treatment for firms that are locally or regionally owned.

"The effect of 'national treatment' is to deprive Caribbean governments of a means of fostering the development of national firms and of cross-border production integration by regionally owned firms; by providing them preferentially with import protection, government purchases, tax incentives, preferential credit, or subsidies such as training grants and grants for research and development.

"These are the kinds of measures that most European countries have in the past used to foster the development of their own businesses."

Measures

The Caribbean diaspora will find that it will have no advantage over non-Caribbean Europeans when it comes to doing business in the Caribbean, even though its members remain citizens of their respective Caribbean countries.

Is it really the right to sit in Parliament that it should be talking about, or the right as citizens to come first in economic opportunities?

It was not absurd when the parliamentary committee with representatives from the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People's National Party (PNP) considering the Jamaican independence constitution agreed to allow Jamaicans the right to enjoy dual citizenship and all the economic, social, civil and political rights of Jamaicans even if they were born or lived abroad and chose to have dual citizenship, a magnanimous gesture, except only for the proviso that they would not be allowed to serve in sensitive offices of the state.

In fact, Mr Golding's predecessor, Edward Seaga, is one of the only two surviving members of that parliamentary committee (along with David Coore).

It is disrespectful to disparage the work of these two constitutional founders and their colleagues to make populist statements to justify the parliamentary absurdity of dual citizens sitting in the Jamaican legislature in contradiction to that very constitution.

Both Seaga and Coore were still being consulted, at least up to 2006, about how best to move forward on these. We need to agree to a Charter of Rights and Freedoms designed to give broader and deeper protection to the fundamental rights we have come to expect in modern society.

New issues

We keep opening up new issues (homosexuality, fixed election dates, rights of dual citizens) without closing off ones that we have agreed to.

We still have not resolved the absurdity of having a Queen of England as our monarch, who has refused to apologise for enslaving us and who requires us to have a visa to come and visit her country. The constitutional absurdity of which Mr Golding speaks can easily be dealt with. We can, and should, amend the constitution so that Commonwealth citizens do not become members of Parliament here, but we do not have to and should not change the clause making dual citizens ineligible for election. Polls show that a majority of Jamaicans at home agree.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: robert.buddan@uwimona.edu.jm.