Premier David Burt will give notice of a Motion rejecting the report by the Foreign Affairs Committee on the UK and its Overseas Territories in the House of Assembly on Monday.
The Motion states: “This report represents an attempt to erode the Constitutional rights of Bermudians and is a retrograde approach to relations between the UK
and Bermuda.
“BE IT RESOLVED that this Honourable House rejects the unwarranted and unjustified attempt at intervention into Bermuda’s domestic affairs and calls on the UK Government to reject the
Report and its retrograde recommendations with respect to Bermuda and the Overseas
Territories.”
The report was followed by the suggestion that all UK citizens who reside here should be allowed to vote and hold an elected office in Bermuda, with calls for the UK government to order all Overseas Territories (OTs) to legalise same-sex marriage, and lay out a timetable for OTs to make their beneficial ownership registers public.
Premier Burt is on record, saying: “The right to vote is perhaps the most highly valued right in a democracy.
“To suggest that non-Bermudians should have the right to determine the direction of our country via the ballot box ignores the history of voting rights in Bermuda and is a tone-deaf recommendation which we will strenuously resist,” he added.
Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Craig Cannonier has stated
that the One Bermuda Alliance “will support efforts to resist this imposition”. And he agreed that “Bermuda’s future should be dictated by Bermudians”.
