Editorial | Twin Queen referendum and local gov’t poll

This newspaper endorses the Government’s decision, formalised earlier this month, to postpone municipal elections for at least another year, but believes that the delay should not be an end in itself.

The extra time should be used to set the stage for Jamaicans to agree to, and vote on, two important constitutional issues: the repatriation of the island’s Constitution and Jamaica’s transition to a republic. These are interrelated and profoundly consequential matters, although some might wish to cast them as merely symbolic. Which, of course, is not a deep reading or understanding of the subject.

Elections for the councillors and 13 parish municipalities, as well as the Portmore city government are, in normal circumstances, held every four years. The last time Jamaicans cast their ballots was in November 2016. They should have done so again, on the outside, before the end of February 2021. However, those polls were postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic – influenced, in part, by the criticism the administration received for calling a general election in September 2020 as the island was entering a second wave of the pandemic.

The latest postponement was pushed through Parliament as a fourth wave of the coronavirus, driven by the Omicron variant, had begun to ebb and as the Opposition argued that the Government was avoiding the contest because of bad economic news, especially rising prices. We, however, feel that the action was prudent on the basis of health, notwithstanding that the Government soon thereafter began to relax COVID-19 restrictions and signalled that more is soon to come.

There are also other good reasons for the postponement. Given the island’s continued commitment to the local government system, it is not unreasonable to argue that there is no placing a price on democracy. But holding elections is not cheap. Our national votes cost in the region of $2 billion. This already-logical postponement of the municipal elections, therefore, provides the opportunity to kill the proverbial two birds with a single stone – getting two for the price of one.

DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE

First, this newspaper is deeply uncomfortable, which we believe is the disposition of the majority of Jamaicans, of having the monarch of Great Britain, which, at this time is Queen Elizabeth II, as our country’s head of state. Who holds this position is no meaningless symbolism. It ought to be an important reference point of who we are, and the aspirations we hold as a sovereign nation and people. The patriarch of a dysfunctional family in the United Kingdom that defined Jamaica’s long colonial experience is not, therefore, an appropriate symbol.

Put differently, the outsourcing of this critical emblem of Jamaica’s sense of themselves ought to end. Similarly, Jamaica’s Constitution, a document signed by a British civil servant as an Order in Council of Her Majesty, should be repatriated. That document should be the result of an act of the Jamaican Parliament as representatives of the Jamaican people.

We had hoped that these things could happen to mark Jamaica’s 60th anniversary of Independence in August. They cannot. The constitutional clauses establishing the Queen as head of state and Jamaica as a monarchy are deeply entrenched, as is the Order in Council upon which the Constitution rests.

Amending them will require long periods between their tabling in Parliament and their substantive debate and, after that, their final passage. Parliament’s decisions, thereafter, have to be confirmed in a referendum.

While all this cannot be done by August, if we are diligent, it can be accomplished during Jamaica’s 60th year of Independence. As P.J. Patterson, the former prime minister, reminded in December, differences were long resolved between the island’s two parties on the kind of presidency we should have. The agreement was for a non-executive one. The formula by which Parliament would choose the president – by both houses sitting separately or together – can be settled, as Mr Patterson said, in a short meeting between Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Opposition Leader Mark Golding. The Government and the Opposition would go into a referendum on a joint platform.

We are aware that Prime Minister Holness recently established a Ministry of Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which, presumably, is to establish the administration’s constitutional reform agenda. That does not mean that the reforms have to be bundled in a single package. The Government should proceed with what is already agreed and can be easily accomplished and is not mindless symbolism. The plebiscite on the monarchy and the repatriation of the Constitution can happen at the same time that we vote for the municipal councillors.