Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Par­lia­ment's mid-year re­cess ends on Fri­day, when the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (HOR) re­sumes with de­bate on the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Amend­ment bill, which will al­low cit­i­zen­ship for ath­letes whose grand­par­ents were born in T&T.

Leader of House Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath last night con­firmed that the Par­lia­ment will re­sume on Fri­day with that bill.

Both the HOR and Sen­ate had been on the an­nu­al mid- year re­cess since Ju­ly.

The pro­posed Con­sti­tu­tion­al Amend­ment bill, which be­gins de­bate, seeks to change the Cit­i­zen­ship of the Re­pub­lic of T&T Act to widen the po­ten­tial pool of in­di­vid­u­als who are en­ti­tled to seek cit­i­zen­ship.

The cur­rent law al­lows in­di­vid­u­als to ap­ply for cit­i­zen­ship based on their par­ents’ na­tion­al­i­ty. The pro­posed bill will al­so al­low ap­pli­ca­tions based on the na­tion­al­i­ty of per­sons' grand­par­ents.

Moves to present the bill were an­nounced by Sports Min­is­ter Phillip Watts at last Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence.

Watts said the Cab­i­net had agreed on the Cit­i­zen­ship (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025, which was to be in­tro­duced in Par­lia­ment at the ear­li­est date.

Ac­cord­ing to Watts, the pro­posed bill will ex­pand the num­ber of ath­letes who will be avail­able for all na­tion­al sport­ing teams.

The bill will amend the cit­i­zen­ship of the Re­pub­lic of T&T Act Chap­ter 1.50 to pro­vide the ac­qui­si­tion of cit­i­zen­ship of per­sons born out­side of T&T if their grand­par­ent was a T&T cit­i­zen at the date of their birth.

Watts said Gov­ern­ment be­lieved that by in­tro­duc­ing the 'grand­par­ent law', they would cre­ate a wider pool of ath­letes to tap in­to in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Cur­rent­ly, he said there are 211 foot­balling coun­tries un­der the world gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball, FI­FA, and T&T is one of five coun­tries that do not use the grand­par­ent law.

Watts specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed the T&T men’s foot­ball team. Sup­port­ing the move was T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Kieron Ed­wards, who al­so ap­peared at the me­dia brief­ing. He said the bill would aid all na­tion­al teams and give the men’s foot­ball team a com­pet­i­tive edge in their Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign.

That CA "Grand­fa­ther" bill is among sev­er­al oth­er bills list­ed on Fri­day's HOR agen­da. It is un­cer­tain if all will be de­bat­ed then.

The oth­er bills are the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sion FATF (Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force bill 2005), the Counter Pro­lif­er­a­tion Fi­nanc­ing bill 2025 and Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­sets Ser­vices Providers bill.

The first per­tains to fur­ther mat­ters con­cern­ing T&T's com­pli­ance with FATF re­quire­ments. Law on FATF is­sues - per­tain­ing to tax and busi­ness is­sues - was passed dur­ing the past PNM gov­ern­ment's term to bring T&T in line with FATF trans­paren­cy com­pli­ance re­quire­ments to pre­vent mon­ey laun­der­ing, ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing and sim­i­lar is­sues.

The Vir­tu­al As­sets bill is ex­pect­ed to per­tain to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and AI mat­ters.

Padarath said he would de­scribe the next cou­ple months of Par­lia­ment work as, "... rev­o­lu­tion­ary, em­pow­er­ing and pro­gres­sive as we work to­wards fi­nal­is­ing 'stand-your- ground' leg­is­la­tion and oth­er pieces of pro­posed law that will im­pact on the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens."

Pri­or to the re­cess, min­is­ters said the SYG bill would have been pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment in Sep­tem­ber. Gov­ern­ment has held pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions around T&T on it.

No in­for­ma­tion has so far been giv­en on if the bill will be done in Sep­tem­ber or af­ter the de­liv­ery of the 2026 Bud­get. That is be­ing done in Oc­to­ber.

The Sen­ate meets next Wednes­day to de­bate on the var­i­ous bills which will be done in the HOR on Fri­day.

Op­po­si­tion PNM whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day said, "When­ev­er Gov­ern­ment calls the House back to busi­ness, we're ready."