Outside the Kingstown High Court on Wednesday, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ Minister of Foreign Affairs Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble delivered sharp remarks targeting two Unity Labour Party (ULP) candidates who have filed constitutional petitions challenging the parliamentary eligibility of both himself and Prime Minister Godwin Friday. The legal proceedings reached a key milestone that day with the submission of closing arguments in the high-stakes case, which stems from the November 2024 general election.
The petitions were lodged by ULP’s Luke Browne and Augustus Carlos Williams immediately after they were defeated by Bramble in the East Kingstown constituency and Friday in the Northern Grenadines race, respectively. The two opposition candidates argue that both New Democratic Party (NDP) legislators are constitutionally barred from holding seats in the House of Assembly, on the grounds that they voluntarily obtained Canadian citizenship, a status they claim violates local parliamentary eligibility rules.
In his public statement to local outlet iWitness News following the Wednesday court session, Bramble struck a defiant tone, stating he had held unwavering confidence that he and Friday would prevail in the legal challenge, and that his conviction had only been reinforced after sitting through the day’s proceedings as a non-legal observer. He framed the petitions as a deliberate, bad-faith move by the former ULP administration to undermine the democratic mandate of the electorate, noting that Friday has served continuously in parliament since the early 2000s. Bramble argued that if the ULP genuinely believed their eligibility claim held legal weight, they would have launched the challenge years earlier, rather than waiting until after they lost the most recent general election.
“For me, this is a profound insult to the people of this nation. They have shown blatant disrespect for the will of the voters who cast their ballots freely last November, and they deserve to pay a steep, long-lasting political price for this action,” Bramble asserted.
On the opposing side, lead counsel for the two petitioners, Senior Counsel Stuart Young, told reporters that none of the closing arguments presented by the defence’s lead lawyer Anand Ramlogan had caught his legal team off guard. Young emphasized that the defence’s submissions had done nothing to weaken the core of his clients’ case, and that he remained fully confident in their legal position as the proceedings move forward. He described the defence’s strategy as casting a wide, unfocused net in the hopes of stumbling across a favourable legal point, a dynamic he said he had anticipated from the start of the case.
Young confirmed that the landmark, unprecedented constitutional case will see the defence wrap up its full submission the following day, after which the petitioner team will deliver their formal response, before Presiding Justice Gertel Thom retires to deliberate and issue a final ruling at a later date. He declined to share additional detailed comments on the case at this intermediate stage, noting that the legal process was still ongoing.