2 weeks Ago
Many months ago we had pointed out that the constitutional reform process will be long, as there are a number of issues that require consensus but on which our two major political parties are at odds. Easily the most divisive of the lot is the matter of our final court. The Opposition People’s National Party is insisting that the process of abolishing the constitutional monarchy and establishing the republic of Jamaica must be twinned with making the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) our final appellate court.
However, the governing Jamaica Labour Party has stated that the decision to replace the Judicial Committee of the United Kingdom Privy Council with the CCJ should be delayed until after the completion of phase one of the process. Two weeks ago, the opposition boycotted the second meeting of the joint select committee examining the Constitution (Amendment) Republic Bill. The move was in keeping with opposition leader Mark Golding’s declaration a week earlier that answers to four questions he had put to Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness on the matter could determine the Opposition’s future participation in committee meetings.
One of those questions asked the prime minister to clarify the stance of the government on the CCJ. Apparently the questions have not been answered, most likely because, according to Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs Mrs Marlene Malahoo Forte, the normal protocol was not utilised. That, she said, means there is “no indication that the prime minister was formally written to”.
This hasn’t been the first hiccup in this process. Last May Mr Golding instructed opposition representatives on the Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC) not to sign off on the committee’s report until concerns he had raised about the reform process were resolved. At the time he had written to Mr Holness stating his concern over the timeline for severing ties with the monarchy and the Privy Council.
Given the hardening of positions on both sides we don’t foresee this matter being resolved in the near future, and especially since the political parties are in election mode. That’s one of the reasons we have repeatedly suggested that there should be no fear within both political parties to put the question of the apex court to the electorate. The work that the CRC has done since it was established in 2023 had given us encouragement that this process was finally being moved beyond pure talk, ever since it was first raised in the 1970s by then-prime minister Michael Manley.
Mr Manley died many years later and the needle had hardly moved on the matter. Since then, successive governments had kicked the can down the road, despite declaring their intention to have Jamaica sever ties with the British monarchy. The current generation of politicos has a duty to avoid the vacillation that, for too long, stymied this important development.
We accept that consensus takes time and effort; however, the government and the opposition need to quit the nitpicking and get the process moving. —Reprinted from the Jamaica Observer..
