Mind your own religious business

While the Constitution of St Vincent and the Grenadines gives individuals the right to practise the religion of their choice, it also requires that they mind their own religious business.{{more}}

This is the understanding of Queen’s Counsel Parnell Campbell, who spoke on the topic “Religion and The Constitution” on his television programme “The Law and You,” last Monday evening.

Campbell, who says he has been studying the constitution for the past forty-one years, read from Section 9 of the Constitution, which deals with religion. He focused particularly on subsections one and five.

Subsection one says “Except with his own consent, a person shall not be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of conscience, including freedom of thought and of religion, freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others, and both in public and in private, to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”

“In other words, under our constitution, a person is perfectly free to practise his religion as he sees fits, or hers for that matter,” Campbell stated.

Subsection five states: “Nothing contained in or done under the authority of any law shall be held to be inconsistent with or in contravention of this Section to the extent that the law in question makes provision which is reasonably required (a) in the interests of defence, public safety, public order, public morality or public health; (b) for the purpose of protecting the rights and freedoms of other persons including the right to observe and practice any religion without the unsolicited intervention of members of any other religion; or (c) for the purpose of regulating educational institutions in the interests of the persons who receive instruction in them, and except so far as that provision or, as the case may be, the thing done under the authority thereof is shown not to be reasonably justifiable in a democratic society.”

“In other words, a country can have laws which make provisions for these things, without having those laws deemed to have contradicted or violated the constitutional right to freedom of religion,” the Queen’s Counsel explained.

“In other words, subsection 1 gives you the right to practise your own religion, but subsection 5(b) is saying, that your right to practise your religion, does not extend to your right to interfere with somebody else’s religion. The Constitution calls it the ‘unsolicited intervention’ in another person’s religion.

“So, what the Constitution in a nutshell is saying, mind your own religious business and don’t interfere with other people’s religious business….Because the Constitution says the same freedom you have to worship as you please, they should have the same freedom to worship as they please,” Campbell explained.

The issue of freedom of religion or religious liberty came to the fore recently, when President of the New Democratic Party (NDP) Arnhim Eustace articulated a policy that no candidate or potential candidate of the Party should make any public statements which are adverse to any religion.

That policy has been vehemently opposed by former NDP senator Anesia Baptiste who was the Party’s proposed candidate in the West St George constituency. Baptiste wrote an eleven-page letter to Eustace on April 17, in which she detailed her objection to the policy. She said the policy was “anti-religious liberty” and “unconstitutional”.

Stating that Eustace was “wrong on many fronts”,

Baptiste said in her letter: “The policy dictated today by you sir contravenes every truth established in SVG’s Constitution regarding religious liberty, freedom of speech and expression and it even contravenes the principles and objects of the party you preside over as shown in its constitution. To dictate that candidates and potential candidates must not make public statements which are averse to any religion is in fact to limit their freedom of speech in the exercise of their religious liberty. … Not only does this policy fail to show a guarantee of maximum expression of democratic liberties by all citizens, it is also unconstitutional in characteristic.”

Campbell, however, cautioned that persons should be careful when making comments which are adverse to another person’s religion.

“I am not saying that every critical comment would be adverse to another person’s religion, but you have to be careful.

“So I do not see how on earth, it could be wrong for a political party to have a policy which says that its candidates and potential candidates should not make statements which are adverse to religious beliefs or religions. That is perfectly in keeping with the Constitution,” he said.

He also drew attention to Section 119, Chapter 171, of the Criminal Code of the Laws of St Vincent and the Grenadines, which says “Any person who, with the intention of wounding the religious feeling of any other person, writes any word or utters any word or makes any gesture or sound in the sight or hearing of any other person or places any object in the sight of any other person is guilty of an offence and liable to imprisonment for two years.”

“In other words, if you have the intention of … insulting anyone’s religion, thereby wounding the religious feelings of the person … you can be found guilty of an offence and liable to imprisonment for two years,” Campbell explained.

“This is the sort of law that the Constitution is saying is quite in order. This is a law that protects of the religious feelings of all persons. … So that section 119 of the criminal code is perfectly constitutional….

“This myth that is being spread that in our Constitution you have the perfect liberty to say what you want is not correct,” Campbell stated.

He, however, made the point that what constitutes an insult to a person’s religion is debatable, depending on what is said and the context in which it is said.

The former Attorney General also mentioned that our Constitution has a provision in section 52(3) which enshrines the British concept of collective responsibility.

“Cabinet cannot have a divided policy. A minister who disagrees with a policy of the Cabinet has to resign. That is normal British parliamentary and Cabinet practice.

Now the Constitution speaks about the Cabinet. It doesn’t speak about the shadow Cabinet. But, with respect, the same principle would apply to members of an opposition shadow cabinet. You cannot have a member of shadow cabinet going off on a tangent and expressing a desire to feel free to disagree with policy set by the shadow Cabinet or the leader of the shadow Cabinet.”

Campbell, who was Chairman of the NDP for fifteen years, also said that the policy enunciated by Eustace is “nothing new”.

“It has always been the policy of the New Democratic Party not to discriminate against religion and certainly, certainly, we did not allow comments to be made to denigrate anyone else’s religion. That was the policy I knew and to merely restate the policy is not adding anything new to the scene,” he added.