Constitution of The Bahamas

How the Constitution is changed27 February 2002

The 2002 constitutional referendum

The first referendum ever held in The Bahamas put five constitutional amendment Bills to the voters. Every one was rejected, by margins of roughly two to one.

Held
27 February 2002
Called by
Free National Movement government of Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham
Required
Three-quarters of all members of each House, then a majority of electors voting (Article 54)
Result
All five questions rejected

Results

QuestionYesNoShare of No
Gender equality29,90634.0%58,05566.0%
Teaching Service Commission32,89237.2%55,62762.8%
Parliamentary Commissioner30,41834.5%57,81565.5%
Boundaries Commission30,90335.0%57,29165.0%
Retirement age of judges25,01829.1%60,83870.9%

Valid votes, as reported after the count. Across all the questions, 66.0% of valid votes were No.

The questions

  1. Question 1

    Gender equality

    Do you agree that all forms of discrimination against women, their children and spouses should be removed from the Constitution and that no person should be discriminated against on the grounds of gender?

    Bahamian women would have passed citizenship to their children born abroad and to their foreign husbands on the same terms as Bahamian men, the rule treating a child born out of wedlock as having no legal father would have gone, and “gender” would have been added to the grounds of discrimination in Article 26. The changes were to apply retroactively.

    Bill
    The Bahamas Constitution (Amendment) Act, 2002
    Articles
    3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 26, 54
    Vote
    29,906 Yes (34.0%), 58,055 No (66.0%)

  2. Question 2

    Teaching Service Commission

    Do you approve of a Teaching Service Commission?

    A separate commission for appointing and disciplining teachers, in new Articles 121A to 121C, would have been entrenched so that it could only be removed by a further referendum.

    Bill
    The Bahamas Constitution (Amendment) (No. 6) Act, 2002
    Articles
    54, 107
    Vote
    32,892 Yes (37.2%), 55,627 No (62.8%)

  3. Question 3

    Parliamentary Commissioner

    Do you approve of an Independent Parliamentary Commissioner?

    The officer who keeps the register of voters and runs elections would have been given a constitutional office with an eight-year term, in new Articles 70A to 70C, and that office would have been entrenched.

    Bill
    The Bahamas Constitution (Amendment) (No. 7) Act, 2002
    Article
    54
    Vote
    30,418 Yes (34.5%), 57,815 No (65.5%)

  4. Question 4

    Boundaries Commission

    Do you approve of the creation of an Independent Boundaries Commission?

    The Constituencies Commission would have been replaced by a Boundaries Commission with members nominated by both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, and the Parliamentary Commissioner as its fifth member.

    Bill
    The Bahamas Constitution (Amendment) (No. 8) Act, 2002
    Article
    69
    Vote
    30,903 Yes (35.0%), 57,291 No (65.0%)

  5. Question 5

    Retirement age of judges

    Justices of the Supreme Court would have retired at 68 instead of 65, with possible extension to 72 instead of 67, and Justices of Appeal on a similar scale.

    Bill
    The Bahamas Constitution (Amendment) (No. 9) Act, 2002
    Articles
    96, 102
    Vote
    25,018 Yes (29.1%), 60,838 No (70.9%)

How it came about

Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham announced the referendum in the House of Assembly on 6 December 2001, near the end of his second term. Ten constitutional amendment Bills were drafted. Five went to the voters; four others, creating the offices of Parliamentary Commissioner and Director of Public Prosecutions and the Teaching Service Commission, were passed by Parliament without a referendum on the view that they added new articles rather than altering entrenched ones. A tenth Bill, which would have let the foreign spouse of a Bahamian live and work in The Bahamas for five years and then be entitled to citizenship, was withdrawn before the vote.

The gender equality Bill passed the House of Assembly on 20 December 2001 with 38 of 40 members in favour, and the Opposition had written in support of it. The Progressive Liberal Party then withdrew its support, arguing that the process had been rushed and that the churches and the public had not been consulted, and campaigned for a No vote. A general election was due within months and was held on 2 May 2002.

What happened afterwards

Because the gender equality Bill was rejected, the citizenship articles kept their 1973 wording. The four Bills that Parliament had passed without a referendum were never brought into operation: no day was appointed for them, so the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Teaching Service Commission never came into being under the Constitution.

The morning after the vote Mr Ingraham said he was ashamed of the result but accepted it as the will of the people. The new government appointed a Constitutional Review Commission in 2002, co-chaired by Paul Adderley and Harvey Tynes, which published options for change in 2003 and provisional recommendations in 2006 but never completed its work. The same questions of gender and citizenship returned to the ballot in 2016.

Sources