The Tribune

By DANA SMITH

Tribune Staff Reporter

dsmith@tribunemedia.net

THE creation of legal framework to regulate donations to the country’s political parties was among the ideas presented to the Constitutional Commission yesterday morning.

The commission invited two noted law students to present their ideas ahead of the commission’s own recommendations to the government, which are expected to be delivered on or before June 30.

Established in 2012 and chaired by former Attorney General Sean McWeeny, the commission’s task is to review the constitution and recommend changes in advance of this year’s 40th anniversary of independence.

Barry Griffin, president of the Bahamas Law Students’ Association, told the commission it is now the “international norm” to regulate party finances because of “the influence of political parties and the donors that support those parties.”

He said: “The United Kingdom, a country that doesn’t event have a written constitution, does not leave control of this part of the political process to unwritten conventions, rather a detailed legal framework regulates it.

“It is my recommendation,” Mr Griffin said, “that the constitution provide: that donation to registered parties and their members but be regulated, that donations can only be accepted from permissible persons with subsidiary legislation to define permissible persons, and donations form anonymous sources should be banned.”

Addressing the commission, Mr Griffin also called for mandatory financial disclosure from members of Parliament, a term limit for the prime minister – who should also become head of state – and fixed term limits for Parliament.

President of the Black Law Students Association of Canada, Marvin Coleby, also spoke and called for a change to constitutional amendment procedures.

“Each step has to have a referendum and though a constitution by its intrinsic nature is supposed to be difficult to change, difficult to amend, I think that makes it too tedious and too costly to have to set a referendum to change even one word in the constitution,” he said.

“Maybe it would be reasonable to allow for the House of Assembly or Senate to amend the constitution rather than calling for a referendum each time.”

Mr Coleby also voiced his opposition to capital punishment and gender discrimination as it relates to the inability of Bahamian women to pass citizenship on to their children.

He further called for persons born in the country to foreign parents to have Bahamian citizenship.