The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham is convinced the Davis administration will criminalise marital rape and solve gender inequality issues pertaining to Bahamian citizenship.

He said he told Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis during a meeting yesterday that his administration could demonstrate its commitment to reform by abandoning its appeal of Supreme Court Justice Ian Winder’s citizenship ruling that children born in The Bahamas out of wedlock to Bahamian men are citizens at birth, regardless of the nationality of their mother. The Office of the Attorney General is currently appealing that ruling to the Privy Council.

 Mr Ingraham’s comments to reporters came after he gave Mr Davis the first of three volumes of a book containing his speeches.

 The three-term prime minister noted discourse around marital rape and gender equality has been going on for years and he recalled a bill his administration tabled in the House of Assembly in 2009 to criminalise marital rape.

“I said publicly I didn’t have the support amongst my colleagues to pass it,” he said.

 Mr Ingraham noted the country’s failed efforts to bring about gender equality through referendums, saying: “It’s not like these things just happened yesterday.”

 Asked if he believes the Davis administration will finally criminalise marital rape, he said he has no doubts about it.

 “I think Prime Minister Davis will deliver on that and I think he will deliver on a couple other things in connection with gender equality,” he said.

“You know, we tried the hard way. I wanted to make an amendment to the laws that couldn’t be changed by another Parliament. It had to go through another referendum, that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t just want to change the law and have somebody come along and change it back. That’s why I went the hard way. Well, The Bahamas having gone the hard way twice, I think Prime Minister Davis will sensibly take the easier way and just do it by legislation and I think he will be successful.”

 Mr Ingraham said changes to ordinary legislation can provide the country with complete gender equality as it relates to citizenship.

 “My only concern was when I did it by referendum, I didn’t want it to be capable of being changed again by another government just because they came to office. But in terms of the law, the Parliament has that authority to be able to do that. They have the authority to grant citizenship to whomever they wish without condition,” he said.

 “I also said when I told him a few minutes (ago) that to demonstrate their sincerity about these equality things, one of the things they could do to start with is just discontinue the appeal before the Privy Council of the judgement by Winder which gave all these children of Bahamian men citizenship, a right to citizenship. He could start that by just saying, ‘stop wasting my money since I say I am going to change the law.’”

 The Minnis administration also pledged early in its term to address gender inequality issues, but never fulfilled its pledge.

 During a Rotary Club speech in 2017, then Attorney General Carl Bethel argued that the government could solve unequal rights to citizenship by amending section six of the Bahamas Nationality Act, removing the words a “minister may at his discretion cause the minor child of a citizen of The Bahamas to be registered as a citizen of the Bahamas upon application” and replacing them with “the minister shall cause the minor child of a citizen of the Bahamas to be registered as a citizen of the Bahamas upon application.”