Lake I’s People’s United Party standard bearer Yolanda Schakron—the replacement candidate for the current area representative Cordel Hyde, who resigned last week—is under fire, as a formal move has been made to block her nomination for general elections, because she is a US national born in Guatemala, although she is Belizean by descent, having described herself to be “as Belizean as rice and beans.”
Contrary to claims that she does not have a Belizean passport, the standard bearer told us yesterday, Thursday, that she was issued a Belize passport in 2003 and it does not expire until 2013. She said she just used it to travel to Chetumal two weeks ago. Her first Belizean passport was issued when she was a baby, said Schakron.
The issue of dual citizenship, which surfaced in the days Marilyn Williams, a dual citizen, ran in Albert (2003), remains live, since the ruling United Democratic Party was forced to abandon its attempt to make dual citizens eligible for election to Parliament.
Schakron’s party, the Opposition PUP, was among those who vocally opposed the legislative amendment which had been bundled in the 7th amendment to the Belize Constitution under which Belize swapped the Privy Council for the Caribbean Court of Justice.
Today, Friday—Nomination Day for persons seeking election on March 7, 2012—the legal hurdle stands, and an official release by the Government of Belize has confirmed that a registered voter in Schakron’s division has complained that she is ineligible for election to Parliament.
Returning officers will take nominations for General Election candidates between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. today, and Schakron told us yesterday evening that she and her supporters will march from the Berger Field on Vernon Street in the morning to be there in time to throw her hat in the ring.
Also lining up among the horses at the political gate will be veteran Carlos Diaz, 64, former Minister of Energy and Communications, who is a longstanding PUP. Diaz told Amandala, however, that he will run as an independent candidate in Lake I, because he does not want Mark King, the UDP’s Lake I standard bearer, to win by default, if Schakron is rejected on Nomination Day.
Diaz told us Thursday night that “when Cordel stepped down, I decided that I was going to try and fill the gap and then the PUP came up with Schakron, and I backed down, because I didn’t want to fight.”
He said that he was motivated by an announcement by Prime Minister Dean Barrow that Schakron will be disqualified on Friday.
Diaz said, “I want to do this independent.” Whether Schakron remains or not, he is still going to run, he added.
The aspiring candidate told us that he has paid his $200 for nomination and he will step into the race today, when he also intends to kick off his campaign.
Diaz is 64, and he told us that he has participated in three elections. Amandala’s archival records detail that he lost to Hubert Elrington in 1984 and 1993, but defeated Elrington in 1989. In the 1998 elections, Diaz was succeeded by Cordel Hyde in Lake I, and now Diaz wants a return to that seat.
As for Schakron, a very prominent newcomer to politics, the Government of Belize issued a press release Thursday declaring that “…a formal objection to the nomination of Ms. Yolanda Schakron as a candidate for the Lake Independence electoral division has been delivered to the Returning Officer, Mrs. P. Noreen Fairweather, by an elector of the Lake Independence Electoral Division.
“The objection is based on the ground that Ms. Schakron is disqualified from being nominated or elected as a member of the House of Representatives in view of section 58(1) (a) of the Belize Constitution which provides that ‘no person shall be qualified to be elected as a member of the House of Representatives who is, by virtue of his own act, under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power or State.’” This is the first of eight disqualification clauses.
Section 57 states the qualification criteria, which are that the person seeking election must be a citizen of Belize, 18 or older, and must have resided in Belize for at least a year before Nomination Day.
As a historical side note, the qualification of the UDP’s Kenneth Tillett was also in dispute in the 1970’s elections, when it was alleged that he did not meet the 1-year residency requirement. Tillett, whose nomination went unchallenged, didn’t win either of the two races he entered. He lost by a single vote in ’74, when Amandala publisher Evan X Hyde, who got 89 votes, was blamed for Tillett’s razor-thin defeat.
Unlike Tillett, Schakron, who has been a frontline activist as head of Belizeans for Justice for more than a year, does not have to be concerned about the residency requirement. However, it has been established that she holds a US passport, obtained on July 8, 2002, and which does not expire until July 7, 2012. This week, when news broke on Channel 7 of her dual nationality, the news station also displayed a copy of that US passport—which Schakron said had been stolen from her home, probably over the weekend.
Schakron has not yet renounced her citizenship, and it appears that she cannot complete the process, begun on Tuesday, February 14, before the deadline for nomination. Her next appointment with the US Embassy is Tuesday, February 21, 2012, when, Schakron told us, she will enter the second part of the renunciation: “I will take the oath.”
The candidate is simultaneously seeking legal redress to preserve her candidacy. At 9:00 a.m. today, Friday, Supreme Court Justice Oswell Legall is scheduled to hear a constitutional motion filed by Schakron’s attorney, Lisa Shoman, who is also the Opposition PUP’s communications director, challenging the objection to her candidacy.
Shoman told us that she is also seeking an injunction, as her client can only be refused for nomination under very specific objections, such as failure to pay her fee, double nomination in another division, disqualification of one of the six electors who must support her bid, or if the nominee does not sign her form.
The attorney contends that her client, who has both Belizean and US citizenship, cannot yet be disqualified for dual nationality, because the clause in the Constitution blocks accession to Parliament—not nomination for the race.
Eric Heyden, Public Affairs Officer at the US Embassy in Belize, confirmed to Amandala Thursday, that Schakron has had her initial renunciation interview with a counselor at the Embassy. There will be a formal renunciation ceremony, which includes an oath and her paperwork, which has to be sent up to the US Department of State in Washington, DC. It is that office that will conduct the final review of whether her renunciation should be accepted, before it can issue “a certificate of loss of US Nationality.”
Asked how long the entire process would take, Heyden said that it is possible it could be complete before March 7, Election Day, but they can’t say for sure.
Schakron told us on Thursday evening that while her attorney is at the court this morning, she and her supporters will be at the Charles Bartlett Hyde Building, where nominations will be taken for Lake I.
As for a back-up plan, should Schakron be rejected by the returning officer, the candidate told us she has heard nothing yet from her party.
Shoman said that given the formal objection released to Schakron’s candidacy Thursday, the Opposition is “right now contemplating whether they should object to certain UDP candidates” she declined to identify.