THE Court of Appeal has denied the government's application to stay the effect of its ruling affirming Supreme Court Justice Ian Winder's landmark decision on citizenship rights in The Bahamas.

The government wanted the ruling stayed until the Privy Council resolves the matter amid concern that people will use the ruling to claim citizenship in the meantime.

Court of Appeal Justice Jon Isaacs, who wrote the ruling which was released yesterday, noted that when the higher court affirmed Justice Winder’s ruling that children born out of wedlock to Bahamian men are citizens at birth regardless of the nationality of the mother, the court never required any money be paid in the case or any act be performed.

Justice Isaacs said: “The condition precedent necessary for the invocation of section 6 is absent. As a result of its absence, there is no basis for the court to insert itself into the process moving toward a hearing by their lordships of Her Majesty’s Privy Council.”

To convince the judges of a need for a stay, government lawyers filed affidavits from Deputy Permanent Secretary Kingsley Smith, Donnette Williamson and Parliamentary Registration Department employee Geoffrey McPhee. They stated that people have visited the Parliamentary Registration Department seeking to apply for citizenship since the major ruling.

“If these affidavits were filed to convince us that due to the court’s judgment, upholding the decision of Winder, J, the floodgates were opened to a tide of applications for registration as Bahamians, for Bahamian passports and to be registered to vote, they are abject failures,” Justice Isaacs said.

“They evince no more than the usual level of interest members of the public may have in a case of some public importance; and cannot give rise to a belief that unless somehow checked, great damage will be done to the polity. Moreover, in the hearing before us, Mr Williams admitted that there had ‘not been a flood or a deluge of applications or claims’ resulting from our decision.”

In exchange for granting the stay application, the government offered not to deport people who claim Bahamian citizenship under Article 6 of the Constitution.

However, Justice Isaacs said: “I do not view this as a viable option as it opens the door for everyone apprehended or approached by members of the Immigration Department or any other agency of the state concerned with the regulation of immigrants in the country, to merely state that they lay claim to citizenship pursuant to Article 6 of the Constitution, to cause any investigation into the legitimacy of their claim to be delayed; and to allow otherwise undeserving persons to continue to reside in the country without let or hindrance.

“However, the offer that ‘the government of The Bahamas, is prepared to give an undertaking, pending the determination of this appeal, not to deport any person claiming under Article 6’ and the declaration of the court, the interpretation of Article 6 is noted; as is such forbearance as the appellant is willing to exercise in light of this court’s judgment.”

Click here to read more at The Tribune