So that even if the two UNC candidates are confirmed in their seats, they might lose them after all if they are jailed for perjury. This is what Sir Ellis Clarke says is not a crisis. In fact, the crisis has been brewing ever since Independence, when we failed to adopt constitutional arrangements sufficiently imaginative to diminish our tendency to racial politics, curb caudillismo and make Parliamentary opposition an honourable condition instead of a badge of infamy. My point was that there were two realities, the legal reality of voluntarily acquired foreign nationality being an impediment to membership of Parliament, and the political reality of the attitudes and preferences of Trinidad and Tobago voters. The average voter in Trinidad and Tobago couldn t care less about dual citizenship.
Most people even view it as an advantage, a sign of enterprise.
This is a country of emigrants. Half the PNM lines up daily outside the United States Embassy in search of green cards, and half the UNC is in Canada trying to get refugee status. Think of the whoppers the Prime Minister has told over the last five years. Remember, too, that ninety per cent of people polled in a television survey believed that all politicians are corrupt. This view can only be reinforced when they see the President of the United States lying under oath, and the President of Peru using his Japanese citizenship to escape the consequences of his conduct in office.