– Harmon says US citizenship officially relinquished
Director-General of the Ministry of the Presidency Joseph Harmon has confirmed that his United States citizenship has been officially relinquished by the United States Government and he is now ready to serve his country again as a member of the National Assembly post 2020 elections.
During a post-Cabinet media briefing on Thursday, the former Minister of State said that he received a response from the US Embassy on October 8th that his application had been approved and the revocation took effect from July 31, 2019.
“I am now GT to the bone”, Harmon said.
Harmon had written to the US Embassy in Georgetown asking that his US citizenship be revoked following the hullaballoo created after former Government MP Charrandas Persaud, himself a dual citizen MP at the time, sided with the Opposition PPP to vote the Coalition Government out of office in December 2018.
Harmon was among four Ministers who were forced to resign as MP and their Ministerial portfolio after the Court ruled that it is illegal for the holder of dual citizenship to serve in the Parliament.
This latest development now paves the way for Harmon’s return to his Ministerial portfolio if the APNU/AFC coalition is returned to power at the March 2020 elections. It also paves the way for Harmon’s return to the National Assembly as a MP post-March 2020 general elections.
Opposition Chief Whip Gail Teixeira and fellow PPP MP Adrian Anamayah had also resigned as members of the National Assembly. Teixeira has since started the process to relinquish her Canadian citizenship.
Article 155 (1) of the Constitution of Guyana states that “No person shall be qualified for election as a member of the National Assembly who (a) is, by virtue of his own act, under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power or state.”
Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire, in her rulings earlier this year, made it clear that by swearing allegiance to another State, a dual citizen is not qualified to be elected to serve in the National Assembly.
Government supporter Compton Reid had challenged the validity of the vote cast by Charrandas Persaud in the National Assembly on the basis that he breached Article 155 of the Constitution, which debars MPs from having dual citizenship. It was this case that brought the issue to light, and the courts in Guyana eventually ruled that dual citizens are not permitted to sit as parliamentarians in Guyana.
