Trevor Munroe | Constitution Amendment Bill – One step forward, two steps backwards, unless…?

The tabling of the Constitution (Amendment) (Republic) Act 2024 and the establishment of a Joint Select Committee to consider and report on the bill is an important step forward. However, unless the Government is willing at this late stage to make big changes in the provisions of the bill, it’s tabling also marks two steps backwards.

How does the bill represent one step forward? For the first time since independence, a government has tabled a bill in Parliament to remove the British Monarch from the Legislative and Executive Branches, to establish the Office of the President of Jamaica and to make provisions for a Jamaican to hold that office. Also, the tabling of the bill marks the first time since the commitment was made in 2006 to give constitutional protection to the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), that the process has actually reached the stage of a bill tabled in Parliament.

Prior to this, processes to reform Jamaica’s Constitution to abolish the monarchy, despite other extremely important recommendations, have not reached this stage. In 1995 for example, a Joint Select Committee of Parliament accepted the recommendation of a Constitution Reform Commission “replacing the Queen as Head of State with a President appointed by the Prime Minister, in consultation with the Leader of the Opposition and confirmed by a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Parliament.” However, an intervening election and other circumstances meant that the bill, embodying this recommendation, was neither drafted nor tabled.

A few years later in April 2011, Prime Minister Bruce Golding indicated that he wanted “Jamaica to mark its 50th year of Independence free of the colonial ties to the British Monarch.” In January 2012, following the change of Government, Prime Minister Simpson Miller repeated this commitment in her inaugural address “In this 50th anniversary, we will initiate the process for our detachment from the monarch.” But again, no bill was tabled.

Nevertheless, this step forward is matched and outdone by two steps backward. How so? The bill, and with it the Government, continues to backtrack on a solemn commitment to legislate impeachment provisions to hold public officials to account and to punish abuse of power by those, including politicians, entrusted with authority over the people. This commitment dates from Jamaica’s National Development Plan (Vision 2030) published in 2009. This plan followed widespread national consultation leading to agreement between the Bruce Golding-led government, the Parliamentary Opposition – led by Portia Simpson Miller, and wide cross-sections of the Jamaican people. The Plan, Vision 2030, explicitly provides for “Enactment of legislation for the impeachment and removal from office of public officials guilty of misconduct, corruption, abuse of authority or betrayal of public trust.” (Page 124)

IMPEACHMENT BILL

To its credit, Prime Minister Golding’s administration in 2010/11 drafted an Impeachment bill and tabled impeachment legislation to implement this national commitment. However, it fell by the wayside in the midst of the crisis over the government’s handling of the request by the United States for the extradition of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke. However, 10 years later, in 2021, the Leader of the Opposition, Mark Golding, tabled an updated version – still yet to be debated – of the 2011 Impeachment Bill. Beyond this, in September 2023, a Don Anderson/RJRGLEANER poll found, “that 91.5 per cent of the Jamaican people wanted impeachment legislation”. Yet, both the national commitment and overwhelming public demand is completely ignored in the bill, which has no provision to strengthen accountability of public officials.

Similarly, Jamaica’s National Development Plan, agreed on by then Government and Opposition commits to “Constitutional reform… [to] amend the Constitution to ensure full sovereignty in the Executive and Judicial branches of Government.” (Page 121). The 2024 bill tabled in Parliament provides for the removal of the British Monarch from Jamaica’s Executive and Legislature, but retains the Monarch’s Privy Council as sovereign over our Judicial Branch. This retention, in effect, means that the revised NIDS Act (for example), adjudged to be in compliance with Jamaica’s Constitution – were it to be challenged – could theoretically be declared unconstitutional by the British Monarch’s court. As such, this Constitution (Republic) Bill maintains sovereign authority of the British Privy Council to overrule not only our Judiciary, but also Jamaica’s Legislative and Executive Branches.

This makes absolutely no sense. The government cannot, in these circumstances, after a 16-year-old national commitment to “full sovereignty” as declared in Vision 2030, postpone some of this sovereignty to a yet ill-defined, undated and non-binding ‘second phase’ of constitutional reform. To add insult to injury, except by omission, the government has yet to state its position on the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), the establishment of which Jamaica helped to finance and whose performance has attracted much commendation.

Despite these serious defects, the most retrograde aspect of this bill is that “continues in force” the power of the Jamaican Prime Minister to be, if he or she so chooses, “a dictator for five years,” as correctly described by Wills O. Isaacs, Norman Manley’s first vice president in the PNP and a member of Jamaica’s Independence Constitution-Making Committee. This dictatorial potential worried some members of the 1962 committee. In particular, Norman Manley felt that the absolute power – proposed and ultimately entrenched in Jamaica’s Constitution – of the Prime Minister to dissolve parliament and call general election at any time it suited him, allowed the Prime Minister in Manley’s words, to “bully” the Cabinet, the Parliament and the entire Government.

CHANGED VIEWS

In the following decades, many of the Constitution-makers who had originally supported this dictatorial power, in particular, former Prime Minister Edward Seaga, changed their view fundamentally. As a result, many recommendations were made and agreed – particularly in the 1991 to 1994 Constitutional Commission – to constrain the Prime Minister’s power. These included the fixing of general election dates and a limit to the number of terms a Prime Minister can serve.

In fact, in February 2016, Prime Minister Holness, as he became, committed to start the legislative process, within the first 100 days in office, to fix election dates, set term limits for the Prime Minister and “to institute impeachment proceedings in Parliament.” ( The Gleaner, February 8, 2016) Yet, over 3,000 days have passed since the Prime Minister acceded to office and no meaningful step has been initiated by the government to fulfil these commitments. To cap what is at best an oversight, and at worst a dereliction, in September 2023, a Don Anderson/RJRGLEANER poll found that a plurality, almost 50 per cent, of the Jamaican people, felt that “the Prime Minister has too much power.” Yet, this bill completely ignores these commitments by PM Holness and continues in force the Prime Minister’s dictatorial power. In fact, in a sense, under the Republic proposed by this bill, the Prime Minister’s dictatorial power is indeed increased and the Opposition’s power to resist is diminished – by virtue of the Government no longer needing the support of at least one Opposition Senator to amend any of the entrenched provisions of the Constitution.

So, this bill will remain two steps backwards, unless at this eleventh hour the government can – within the next two weeks – begin implementation of a comprehensive, across the board public education programme on Constitutional Reform; initiate the meaningful citizen consultation it has hitherto neglected and be prepared to amend the bill to make our Parliamentary-Cabinet government less authoritarian and more democratic. Any less than this, and PM Holness’ March 2022 declaration of “moving on” risks standing still, or going backwards.

Professor Emeritus Trevor Munroe is a governance consultant and founding director of National Integrity Action. Send feedback to info@niajamaica.org and columns@gleanerjm.com