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– APNUAFC demands after she confesses being a dual citizen at the time of taking the oath as minister
The A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) is demanding that Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce, Oneidge Walrond resigns from Office, and immediately step down as a Member of Parliament.
The call comes hours after Minister Waldron admitted that she was a citizen of the United States of America (USA) when she took the oath of office to serve as a Member of Government.
In a statement on Saturday, APNU+AFC said it was alarmed by Minister Walrond’s “stunning admission” that she was a dual citizen at the time she was sworn in as Minister of Government.
Article 155 of the Constitution bars dual citizens from being Members of Parliament, but in her defense, Walrond pointed out that she is a Technocratic Minister sitting in the House, and her subsequent decision to relinquish her foreign status was only out of caution.
But the APNU+AFC said the 2019 decision of the country’s Chief Justice (ag), Roxane George-Wiltshire clearly states that based on the Constitution of Guyana dual citizens are not eligible to be Members of Parliament.
“There is no distinction, with regard to eligibility, between elected Members of Parliament and technocrat Members of Parliament,” the APNU+AFC said, while adding that “a person’s dual citizenship comes to an end at the time of the dated renunciation certificate, not at the time when one decides to embark on the process.”
In her statement, Walrond admitted that at the time she was sworn in as a Minister, on August 5, 2020, she was not in possession of the renunciation certificate.
“Ms. Waldron does not specifically state that at the time when she was sworn in as a Member of Parliament that her citizenship was renounced. Ms. Waldron is being disingenuous and duplicitous and misleading when she states that she “immediately renounced her citizenship”. There is no such thing as the immediate renouncing of one’s citizenship. It is a process and it is only formal and final AFTER the process is completed, not when one initiates the process,” the APNU+AFC said.
The coalition said it is event that at the time when Walrond was sworn in as a Minister she was not eligible to be a Minister as all Ministers must be eligible to be Members of Parliament.
It maintains that the Tourism Minister is in breach of the Constitution of Guyana and is therefore scandalously and illegally squatting in the National Assembly.
Further the APNU+AFC Coalition condemned what it described as “downright deceitful” utterances of Gail Teixeira, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, who denied that the Tourism Minister had dual status at the time of her taking the oath of office.
