Candidate Nomination and Constitutionality

THE IMPORTANT Nomination Day procedures were held as mandated on Monday, November 10,2025 with much fanfare and horn-blaring as candidates paraded to the Nomination Centers accompanied by their supporters. Some candidates were outfitted in formal business attire while others preferred more casual wear in just the colours of their party.

The Nomination process itself is fairly simple, though by no means unimportant. Our Constitution states that each candidate’s Nomination Form must be signed by six or more electors who are qualified to vote in the particular constituency in which their candidate seeks to be elected. The candidate being nominated is required to make a deposit of EC$500.00 to the Treasury, refundable only if the candidate obtains above a requite number of votes. On Monday, some 34 persons turned up at the designated offices and completed this process. This number included 15 candidates each for the incumbent Unity Labour Party (ULP), led by Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, and the New Democratic Party (NDP), led by Dr. Godwin Friday, both lawyers by profession. The remaining four candidates come from the newly formed National Liberation Movement.

But Monday’s process was not without some surprising legal drama. Two petitions, each bearing 10 signatures, four more than the requisite number of six, were presented in the Northern Grenadines and the East Kingstown constituencies objecting to the eligibility of Dr. Godwin Friday and Fitzgerald Bramble to contest the elections. The objections are based on the charge that both candidates are citizens of Canada, having sworn allegiance to a foreign power thus making their candidacies unconstitutional.

This move has evoked very emotional responses from members of the public. Supporters of the New Democratic Party which see this upcoming poll as theirs to lose, will of course be upset. And this has sparked much hot debate in the public sphere. But are these challenges in themselves unconstitutional?

Our electoral history would show that on September 30, 2016, lawyer Kay Bacchus Baptiste, on instructions of her client Ben Exeter, had written to Sir Louis Straker giving him seven days to prove that he was not a citizen of the United States of America when he had been nominated to contest the Central Leeward constituency, or to demit office. Said letter stated that Bacchus’s clients had instructed her to request Sir Louis’ resignation from Parliament within seven days, or produce proof of having renounced his US citizenship. Failing this, the lawyer’s letter threatened, the matter would have been taken to the High Court.

Sir Louis famously was to ignore the letter for some 573 days until, in an April 26, 2018 exclusive interview with a SEARCHLIGHT reporter, he revealed that he had in fact long renounced his US citizenship since February 1, 1994. He was subsequently elected to Parliament on February, 24 that year. Sir Louis had obviously given up his citizenship to be on the right side of the nation’s Constitution.

These two challenges, brought on Nomination Day, and as bothersome as they might be, are therefore quite in order and in accordance with the Constitution of St.Vincent and the Grenadines. Is the timing an inconvenient issue for the opposition? Certainly, but it does not mean that both candidates will not be allowed to contest the November 27, 2025 general elections. What it signals however, is that post the elections, a successful outcome by both candidates can be met with electoral challenges.

But beyond that, this makes for an interesting constitutional exercise, and tests the limits and our understanding of our constitution as it relates to dual citizenship and participation of candidates in our electoral process. There is precedence in the OECS sub-region of similar challenges being brought against candidates holding two passports. So while we do not think that these challenges would, in a major way, impact on voting patterns or outcomes in the upcoming polls, constitutional lawyers must be already doing their research in anticipation of court action following the November 27 general elections.