Sept. 4, 2008 — Inching towards its goal of a draft constitution by Oct. 6, the Fifth Constitutional Convention heard progress reports from several of the convention's component committees Wednesday. Inclement weather prevented several convention delegates from flying to St. Croix for the plenary session, held in the D.C. Canegata Ball Park multipurpose center. As a result, the plenary session did not meet its quorum of 21 and no votes were taken.
The committees on the Legislature, general government and taxation each reported on draft language proposals, but did not yet have complete proposals approved by committee vote. The delegates heard and discussed the reports, debating elements, asking questions and periodically getting advice from legal counsel.
Delegate Adelbert Bryan did most of the speaking, commenting extensively and repeatedly on each report in turn and asking many questions. In one instance Bryan objected to language preventing the Legislature from meeting in lame duck session after the election except in emergencies.
"If you don't define what an emergency is, it will be up to the Legislature to define it for themselves," he said.
Delegate Clement Magras said the goal was to prevent controversial situations where a lame duck Legislature approves questionable procurement contracts, votes itself raises or otherwise passes unpopular legislation after the election and before leaving office.
"This language is an attempt to do that, not shut down the Legislature," Magras said. "If you can propose better language, let's hear it."
"To me, if you are trying to prevent those types of activity, you should put in language saying what those activities are," Bryan said.
Bryan also questioned language that would allow each of the three major islands to set up municipal districts as it sees fit, based on a vote of the district. He raised the possibility of white people from the mainland buying up houses in an area and voting to make their neighborhood a separate district, forbidding non-whites from living there. He said Water Island was once exclusively for whites.
Delegate Douglas Brady said Bryan was misreading or misunderstanding the text.
"It has to be the whole district voting, not the people in the municipality," Brady said. "A majority of voters in the district to be subdivided would have to approve."
Bryan reiterated his belief that only those born in the Virgin Islands and those meeting a complex definition of native Virgin Islander should be allowed to hold office.
"This is a colonial situation, a trust territory," he said. "Tomorrow they could tell us we are not part of the U.S. and can't stay."
Because of the colonial past, because of slavery, because Virgin Islanders were not consulted in the sale of the territory to the U.S. and were not citizens for the first decade after transfer, and because of the U.S. history of racism and his strongly held view that African-Americans are still second class citizens, Bryan believes those born on other West Indian islands should not be able to hold office in the Virgin Islands.
"The criteria for elective office have to be far stronger than the criteria to be a government employee," Bryan said, adding that only native Virgin Islanders should have that right. Such a restriction would exclude the 29 percent of the territory's population born on other West Indian islands, the 14 percent of of all races born elsewhere in the U.S. and the five percent born on Puerto Rico, reserving elective office for the 45 percent of residents born in the territory.
A simple definition of a native Virgin Islander has broad appeal within the convention and was a part of the document produced by the Fourth Constitutional Convention in 1980. Attaching unique rights and privileges to the definition, however, has not been supported to date by a majority of the delegates. (See: "'Native' Definition Tweaked by Constitution Committee.")
The convention meets again at the Canegata ballpark Thursday at 9:30 a.m. and will hear reports from the rest of the committees. On Sept. 9 and 10, the convention will meet in plenary session on St. Thomas at the University of the Virgin Islands Administration and Conference Center.
Eighteen of the 30 delegates were present Wednesday: Craig Barshinger, Brady, Rena Brodhurst, Bryan, Mario Francis, Stedman Hodge Jr., Gerard Luz James II, Magras, Thomas Moore, Mary Moorhead, Dr. Eugene Petersen, Kendall Petersen, Clair Roker, Robert Schuster, Lawrence Schuster, Michael Thurland, Elsie Thomas-Trotman and Alecia Wells. Absent were Douglas Capdeville, Gerard Emanuel, Arnold Golden, Violet Anne Golden, Lois Hassell-Habtes, Francis Jackson, Myron Jackson, Wilma Marsh Monsanto, Richard Schrader Jr., Charles Turnbull, Arturo Watlington, Jr. and Lisa Williams.
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