A savings clause helps protect Prime Minister Godwin Friday and Fitz-Gerald Bramble by “grandfathering in” past actions and making them legally acceptable, regardless of whether they were considered unconstitutional at the time they occurred.
Specifically, the proposed constitutional amendment includes this savings clause that retroactively applies new rules all the way back to 1979, the commencement of the country’s constitution.
The clause explicitly dictates that no nomination or election from 1979 onward can be rendered invalid simply because a candidate held allegiance to a Commonwealth country.
Because Prime Minister Godwin Friday and Minister Fitzgerald Bramble are the only two elected officials currently facing legal challenges for holding foreign allegiance via their Canadian passports, this clause is directly designed to legally validate their recent electoral victories after the fact.
By rewriting the law retroactively, the savings clause provides these politicians with an absolute defense against the ongoing court case challenging their constitutional eligibility. It allows their lawyers to simply appear at the next hearing and tell the judge that “there’s no case here anymore,” successfully bypassing the judiciary by resolving the legal dispute themselves from within parliament.
This retroactive protection according to legal experts is like changing the rules of a sport after the game has already been played, such as waiting until a cricket match is over and then deciding to count all fours as sixes to guarantee that your team wins.
The clause protects the politicians by allowing them to act as their own judge and jury, altering the foundation of the country’s laws to permanently erase their own invalidity.
