Should economic citizens be allowed to vote?

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - WITH the government revamping two critical programmes in St. Kitts and Nevis - the Citizenship by Investment Programme and the Electoral system - questions remain over whether or not economic citizens should be allowed to vote.

Attorney General and Minister of Justice the Hon. Vincent Byron, during a recent WINN FM 98.9 interview, noted that it is something the government would have to look at, during its consideration of the electoral revamping process.

Byron, who is one of the persons advocating revamping the electoral system, told the media house that the government has been operating under the belief that economic citizens are not qualified to vote.

“The category of citizens that we have been operating under the view that they are not eligible to be registered to vote...is the economic citizen. Last year - I think it was - that we had identified that there are more than 11,000 economic citizens; [and] the general sense that they are not entitled to register to vote and this may be… unconstitutional.”

He further noted that with the 11,000 economic citizens residing outside of St. Kitts and Nevis, it is unfair for them to be able to sway the elections one way or the other. 

“...does it really mean therefore that people who do not live here, but hold Kittitian citizenship, should they be allowed to register to vote and…influence the direction of our country when they don’t have residence here?” 

Byron stressed that it is one of the key conditions that they would have to consider in the electoral reform process.

Operation Rescue's, Dwyer Astaphan told SKNVibes that he supports debarring economic citizens from voting.

He said allowing these individuals to vote would create unwanted imbalances.

“I don’t think that they should be allowed. You are granting citizenship on certain conditions that can be set by Parliament. They come in through citizenship and you set the conditions, and I don’t think that they should be allowed to vote because that can set some dangerous imbalances and skew the political system and democracy.”

How noted that matters such as these could always find their  way into the courts, however, “I don’t think the challenge would be successful.”