Lawyer Kay Bacchus-Baptiste says that Opposition Leader Ralph Gonsalves knows about the government changing the law to avoid losing in court.
She cited an instance when the Gonsalves administration did just that on a Sunday before the court was expected to hear arguments challenging the legality of a tax on people travelling to the Grenadines.
The “tax” referred to the EC$1 that the then Unity Labour Party (ULP) government, led by Gonsalves, ordered that people travelling to the Grenadines pay to use the ferry terminal, although the government had no legal authority to collect the money.
Bacchus-Baptiste, a former NDP senator and candidate, made the point as she responded to opposition criticism of a proposal by the government to amend the Constitution to “clarify” who is qualified to run for office.
The ULP has filed two petitions challenging the qualification of Prime Minister Godwin Friday and East Kingstown MP, Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble, to contest the Nov. 27, 2025, general election.
The ULP argues that Friday, who has been an MP since 2001, and Bramble, who was elected to a second five-year term, were not qualified to be candidates because they obtained Canadian citizenship by their own acts.
A joint trial of the petitions is slated for July 28-30.
Bacchus-Baptiste acknowledged that the NDP was proposing to change the constitution even as there were two cases in the court related to the meaning of that section of the law.
“… persons are free to comment on that,” Bacchus-Baptiste told iWitness News.
“But what I would remind persons also is that … when we brought a case — myself and Nicole Sylvester — against the government for levying a fine on persons going to Bequia, a $1 tax or fine, … saying there was no law permitting it, and you cannot tax a person unless the law permitted it, they went overnight and changed it,” Bacchus-Baptiste said.
“When we were preparing to go to court the morning to deal with the injunction that we were applying for, we were presented with this regulation that they woke up the printery and got it done overnight, the minister, and presented it to us, effectively to bar our injunction.”
She said the case was appealed but was never heard in the Court of Appeal.
“For a long time, we kept trying to get it, until when Ralph says a woman, some old woman, tell him he should drop the $1 tax.
“After Ralph made that pronouncement and it was dropped, the case appeared on the Court of Appeal list, and we had to withdraw it, because we, of course, were happy. Then there was no reason to keep it because the one-dollar tariff was removed.
“They have experience of doing something, particularly not to clarify anything, but to defeat a case.”
Bacchus-Baptiste says the NDP government’s proposed change to the Constitution is not the same as what the ULP had done then.
“It is not the same thing because our law says clearly that you must be a Commonwealth citizen [to qualify to contest an election in St. Vincent and the Grenadines].
“All we’re doing is defining the omission from the definition section. That’s all. We’re not changing it at all. We’re not changing what the law says. We are clarifying something, and I think it’s needed,” Bacchus-Baptiste said.
“Of course, they’re free to comment and say, ‘You’re only doing this now, because the case is there’, but it’s something that should have been done.”
Bacchus-Baptiste further told iWitness News that the NDP’s position now is the same as it was in 2009, when it campaigned against changes in the Constitution.
At the same time, Gonsalves and his ULP government urged electors to vote for the proposed changes, noting, among other things, that any Commonwealth citizen could live in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and then run for office.
