Letter of the Day | Jamaica needs to join the Caribbean Court of Justice
Published:Saturday | December 14, 2024 | 12:06 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
I am writing with reference to the article ‘Bill to replace British monarch tabled’. The article quoted Marlene Malahoo Forte, the constitutional affairs minister, who tabled the bill on Tuesday: “The tabling of the bill marks the greatest progress made so far in our effort to reform the Constitution of Jamaica to achieve the national goals of having a Jamaican as head of state instead of the hereditary British monarch and also having our supreme law taken out from under the cloak of the imperial Order in Council and placed in proper form.”
While listening to ‘Beyond the Headlines’ on RJR, the issue of constitutional reform was being discussed with the People’s National Party’s (PNP’s) spokesperson on justice, Senator Donna Scott-Mottley. She stated that the PNP parliamentarians will participate in the Joint Select Committee of Parliament so established to debate the named bill. However, as to the final vote within the Senate, which would require a PNP senators’ vote to formally approve the bill, she said that the PNP will not vote to pass the bill until and unless the issue of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council’s removal is also included in to formally remove the Privy Council as the country’s final court and pave the constitutional way for the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to be Jamaica’s last court of appeal.
The removal of the Britain-based Privy Council should be paramount and should have been included in this same bill tabled in Parliament to replace the British monarch. It is rather preposterous to have the Government bring to Parliament and table a bill to remove the king as Jamaica’s head of state and contemporaneously have the Privy Council remaining as Jamaica’s final court of appeal.
The government of Jamaica paid some US$27 million towards the establishment of the CCJ’s Trust Fund, which funds the operation of the court. Why is Prime Minister Andrew Holness reluctant to have Jamaica withdraw from the Privy Council? Polls conducted over the past five years indicate that the majority of Jamaicans are of the view that the country should sever judicial ties with the Privy Council, and for Jamaica to join the CCJ.
Senator Mottley enunciated, as well, if this the appropriate time for such a Constitutional Bill to be brought to Parliament for debate when a general election is months away? Why is the Government seeking to politicise the process? The Government has tabled the bill when the Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC) has not even adequately completed its informed national consultations with the Jamaican people. A failed CRC, to put it bluntly. Jamaica needs to join the CCJ as the country’s final court of appeal and constitutionally sever ties with the Privy Council. It was the forward-thinking prime minister, Bruce Golding at that time while serving, who took an Impeachment Bill to Parliament which was never passed into law, for he departed as PM shortly thereafter and, all these years later, such an important, necessary and required law is still not in place. A massive negative indictment on the Parliament.
ROBERT DALLEY