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From:TheBahamasWeekly.com Bahamas Information Services Updates
NASSAU, THE BAHAMAS – Nearly 300 marine officers of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force attended an Information Seminar on the Amendment of the Constitution of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas to Achieve Gender Equality, August 20, at the RBDF Coral Harbour Base. The presentation to the marine officers was held by the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) to clarify gender and citizenship issues, and was chaired by retired Justice Rubie Nottage. Justice Nottage discussed at length issues contributing to the debate of the Constitutional Bills. She outlined legal clarifications on the definitions of sex, gender, and creed, as it is applied to male and female, as well as father or mother within the existing Constitution, and reiterated Bahamian voters could expect to be asked to exercise their voice by answering four simple questions on the constitutional issues outlined in the upcoming Referendum exercise. Justice Nottage presented the new classifications as a redefinition of the new Bahamian beliefs, from the perspective of a new generation, concerning how equality is expressed legally in the supreme law of the land. In the interest of achieving complete understanding of the issues at hand she also gave illumination on various technical terms in the Bills including terms such as, “prospective” – or ‘going forward’ from the date it is voted to be operational -- and “retrospective” – ‘going backwards’ to the date the Constitution was enacted on July 10, 1973. Question and answer sessions helped refine understanding of the debate, and the four questions to which the Bahamian public must respond.
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