Editorial | Her Majesty’s Privy Council and Jamaica’s constitutional debate

It is not this newspaper’s intention to rob Prime Minister Andrew Holness of any glory from his appointment to Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, which was announced last week by the governor general, Sir Patrick Allen, and rebroadcast by the Office of the Prime Minister.

At some convenient time, Mr Holness will be sworn in, initiated as a privy counsellor, at a ceremony that normally involves kneeling before the sovereign and the reciting of an ancient oath that includes pledges of allegiance to the Queen. The period leading up to the initiation is an opportunity for the prime minister to reflect on Jamaica’s constitutional arrangements, including whether he still believes that Jamaica should decouple from the monarchy and become a republic. It is a matter on which Mr Holness might wish to have a chat with Her Majesty at the ceremony, giving her a heads-up of his planned timetable for the move.

In the meantime, Mr Holness should update Jamaicans on these constitutional questions and what, if any, work his Government has done to advance the matter. Indeed, we have heard little from the administration on the issue since the last general election, which gave Prime Minister Holness’ Jamaica Labour Party a large parliamentary majority.

QUEEN’S ADVISORY BODY

With respect to the Privy Council, not to be confused with its judicial arm, which serves as Jamaica’s final court – of which Mr Holness is now a member – it serves as an advisory body to the Queen in formulating her Orders in Council. It is made up primarily of British politicians and sometimes the leaders of those Commonwealth countries that retain the British monarch as their head of State. Former Jamaican prime ministers P.J. Patterson and Edward Seaga were members. But in practice, it is a relatively small group of officials, mainly UK government ministers, who attend the meetings.

Perhaps the most significant Order in Council relating to Jamaica issued in the island’s modern history is the one that gave effect to our 1962 Independence Constitution. It was signed by W. G. Agnew, a British civil servant, who was senior clerk to the Privy Council, or the body’s top bureaucrat. In other words, Jamaica’s Constitution is not a creature of the island’s Parliament. As Lloyd Barnett, the constitutional scholar, observed in an article in this newspaper last December, Jamaica’s Constitution is an “appendix to an Order in Council made by the Queen in England ‘’and, therefore, is a “subsidiary instrument to a British Order”.

Its formal repatriation as a Jamaican instrument, approved by its parliament, would, in the circumstance, be a significant symbol of ownership of our sovereignty. Mr Holness has not, up to now, specifically addressed the issue in this context but has in the past, and his party previously made it a pledge in its election manifesto, declared support for ditching the Queen as head of State and replacing her titular representative, the governor general, with a non-executive president.

REFERENDUM

Given that the monarchy is deeply entrenched in the Constitution, the parliamentary manoeuvres for its change would have to include a referendum. However, there is already cross-party consensus on this issue. At the same time, though, Mr Holness also wants to bundle into the referendum the question of Jamaica’s repeal of its buggery law as well as leaving the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and making the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) Jamaica’s final court, although a referendum is not a constitutional requirement in either of those issues.

Dr Barnett had hoped that the repatriation of the Constitution, accession to the CCJ, and entrenchment of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica in the Constitution would be in place by the time Jamaica celebrates its 60th anniversary of independence in August 2022.

But with the seeming inaction of the Government on any of the big constitutional or governance matters that were on its agenda, that now seems a forlorn hope. Unless Prime Minister Holness, now that he is a privy counsellor, is excited into action.