Editorial | Chart course for Jamaica beyond the Queen

Prime Minister Mia Mottley last week reaffirmed her intention to replace the Queen as Barbados’ head of state, and to install the incumbent governor general, Dame Sandra Mason, as the island’s first president by the time the country celebrates its 55th anniversary of independence this November. This move, she told Barbadians, was part of “completing the process of independence”, started by one of her predecessors, Errol Barrow, in 1966.

Ms Mottley’s declaration, and an aggressive agenda of constitutional reform she outlined in a chatty, conversation-like broadcast, was a reminder of Jamaica’s stalled constitutional project, and the great likelihood that our symbolic 60th birthday will pass next August with nothing significant on that front.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness, therefore, owes the country a clear and cogent explanation of his ideas on constitutional reform and the timelines thereof, borrowing, perhaps, from the approach of Prime Minister Mottley. For while Jamaicans understand the attention the administration is forced to devote to the COVID-19 epidemic, it does not mean that big ideas of government and governance should be put on hold. Indeed, in periods like these, they often matter more – when illiberal forces will attempt to capitalise on the distractions and fears of citizens to trespass on their rights. It may be a seemingly benign declaration from an army general about short-term suspension of freedoms in exchange for protection from criminals.

What Ms Mottley is committed to accomplishing by this November has been on Jamaica’s agenda for decades. In fact, transforming Jamaica to a republic and excising Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors as the symbol of Jamaica’s sovereignty, is one of the constitutional matters on which there is ostensibly cross-party consensus. Former People’s National Party administrations had pledged to do it. Prime Minister Andrew Holness and his Jamaica Labour Party twice promised it in election manifestos – and in at least one Throne Speech by the governor general. Mr Holness himself gave voice to the idea. Which, of course, makes sense. For, stated differently, the embodiment of the Jamaican State and its authority is, whatever good qualities she may have, the matriarch of a dysfunctional Anglo-German family, whose grandson strongly implied that members of the clan, in the 21st century, exhibit anti-black racist tendencies.

Yet, in his more than five years in government, Mr Holness appears to have lacked a serious appetite and the will to pursue such hefty matters – except for his party’s incongruent, historic opposition for the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to replace the London-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as Jamaica’s court of last resort. This probably has something to do with the political difficulty that might attend transitioning to a republic in the absence of rock-solid, cross-party agreement on the issue.

In Barbados, where Ms Mottley controls almost all the seats in the House, she has two-thirds majority to change Section 63 of the constitution, which established the monarchy and vested “executive authority ... in Her Majesty”, or Section 28 that created the post of governor general, “who shall be Her Majesty’s representative in Barbados”, or Section 35 that made the Queen an integral institution of Parliament. In the Senate, where the government has seven of the 21 members (57 per cent), even if the two opposition members held out, Ms Mottley could likely persuade two of the seven independent members, appointed by the governor general, to vote with her side to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority for the bill to carry.

In Jamaica, Mr Holness controls 77 per cent of the seats in the House, beyond the two-thirds he requires. But for the corresponding constitutional clauses to be amended, the bill(s) would have to lay on the table of the Parliament for three months before a substantive debate, and a further three months after that before a vote. In the Senate, he would need the support of at least one of the Opposition’s eight senators to carry the vote. The bill would then be subject to a referendum, where peripheral political issues, rather than only the merits of the issue, are likely to mar the debate. Should all go smoothly, this process could still take a year or more.

In Jamaica, matters would be further complicated by the Government’s attitude to the CCJ. While Jamaica’s accession to the court, it is widely agreed, does not require a referendum, the Government has insisted on this route, a position from which it might be difficult to retreat, given its long and heavy investment in the strategy.

Yet, the accession to the CCJ would open the highest tier of the judicial system to far more Jamaicans, beyond the mostly corporate titans with commercial matters or well-heeled people with public law issues who can afford to go to the Privy Council, or murder convicts whose cases are often handled pro bono by English attorneys. It would be a good 60th Independence anniversary present to Jamaica, and a fillip to his legacy, if Mr Holness were able to extricate himself from the self-knotted CCJ entanglements and deliver the court by August 2022.

By that time, too, with political consensus assured, Jamaica could be far down the wicket on repatriating its Constitution by having one passed by the national Parliament, rather than the product of an Order in Council, signed by a British civil servant. Ms Mottley last week set out a two-year process of constitutional reform, the first fruit of which will be the republican state national charter this November. Prime Minister Holness should lay out his idea and his intended process for getting us there.