Jalil Dabdoub
ON MARCH 23, Jalil Dabdoub plans to report for work at the Dabdoub Dabdoub and Company law firm in Kingston. While routine case reviews are likely, the 38-year-old lawyer says the by-election in West Portland will also weigh on his mind.
That contest, between the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) Daryl Vaz and Kenneth Rowe of the People's National Party (PNP), will give people in the constituency a parliamentary representative for the first time in over a year.
Vaz was elected member of parliament for West Portland in the September 2007 general election which the JLP won by four seats. His PNP opponent, Abe Dabdoub, challenged his legitimacy, saying Vaz was also a United States citizen.
A yearlong legal battle ended three weeks ago with the Court of Appeal upholding Chief Justice Zaila McCalla's ruling that while Vaz was not eligible to sit as MP, Abe Dabdoub would not be given the seat. A by-election, the court agreed, will decide who represents West Portland in the House of Representatives.
Jamaican law prohibits persons with dual citizenship from serving in parliament. There are three similar cases involving parliamentarians from the JLP currently before the courts.
Like father Abe, Jalil Dabdoub speaks with a pronounced drawl but shows little of the feistiness associated with his 'old man'. The eldest of five children, he led his father's courtroom charge and although disappointed with the by-election decision, he is satisfied that Vaz v Dabdoub will be a landmark.
American citizen
"It is going to be an important case because the constitution has been upheld in terms of who can sit in parliament. In future, as far as this provision is concerned, the parties will have to comply with it," he told The Sunday Gleaner.
Vaz held a United States (US) passport which he said was due to his mother being an American citizen. He renounced his US citizenship last year; but for Jalil Dabdoub that is not enough.
"As it regards to serving as a legislator, I believe 150 per cent that only persons with undivided loyalty to Jamaica should sit in parliament or the Senate," Dabdoub argues. "Certain circumstances like work or education may allow someone to live overseas but my view is, "If you want to come back to Jamaica, I'll welcome you back." But I want to see you cut that umbilical cord to wherever it is you were," he added.
Attorney Bert Samuels concurs that the Vaz/Dabdoub case will have lasting impact.
"The final Court of Appeal has spoken definitively that a person, being an adult, who has a passport from a foreign state has done acts of allegiance to that state. That makes them ineligible to sit in the Lower House or the Senate," Samuels said.
controversial case
Jalil Dabdoub says although several lawyers in the PNP and JLP questioned Abe Dabdoub's case against Vaz, he did not.
"Only my father would do something like this," he said, smiling. "But when we did our research, we found that what he said was logical."
The younger Dabdoub had worked on another controversial recall case involving his father, a brash lawyer of Palestinian heritage who was a long-standing member of the JLP up until 2006.
Running on the JLP ticket in the 1997 general election, Dabdoub lost the North East St Catherine constituency to the PNP's Phyllis Mitchell. Four years later, the Supreme Court upheld Dabdoub's legal challenge and awarded him the seat.
Although he was part of a team that defended banker Paul Chen Young in a bitter dispute with Eagle Merchant Bank earlier this decade, the Vaz v Dabdoub case is Jalil Dabdoub's biggest assignment to date. He holds a law degree from the University of Miami, but was admitted to the Jamaican bar in October 1998 after meeting requirements of the Norman Manley Law School.
legal world
Although his first degree (from Barry University in Florida) is in economics, Dabdoub says the legal world always intrigued him. He remembers his father feverishly studying documents and photographs from two of independent Jamaica's most infamous events: the 1978 Green Bay incident, and the 1979 death of west Kingston community leader Claudius Massop.
"I've always liked the concept of law because it keeps order in a country.
If you don't have a strong legal system, no matter how wealthy the country, it can't function," he said.
Married and the father of three daughters, Dabdoub and his brother Khalil also operate Home & Things, a company that distributes construction and finishing products. He does not rule out a crack at politics.
"I can see myself doing it at a later date, but right now there is no politics of consensus in Jamaica, just tribalism and confrontation," he said. "I hope in my lifetime to see that broken."