Editorial | Get the republic done

The latest Don Anderson opinion poll for the RJRGLEANER, published by this newspaper last week, reaffirmed that approximately six in 10 Jamaicans are firmly on the side of ditching Queen Elizabeth as their head of state and of the island becoming a republic. But perhaps the poll’s more revealing confirmation is of the inexorable march, over the past decade, of Jamaicans away from the column of supporters of the monarchy.

In 2012, 40 per cent of Jamaicans were in favour of the monarchy, a mere four percentage points behind those who wanted a republic. Today, the proportion of the population that clearly favours the island remaining a monarchy has dropped to 27 per cent, a decline of 13 percentage points. Expressed another way, there are approximately 33 per cent fewer Jamaicans who today want Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to continue as our sovereign.

Since 2020, firm support for Jamaica “moving on”, as Prime Minister Andrew Holness put it to the Duke of Cambridge, the Queen’s grandson, in March, has hovered at just shy of 60 per cent. It was 56 per cent in the August survey.

This clear majority in favour of disengagement from the Queen raises questions about the Government’s seeming lack of urgency in resolving the matter – on which there is already national and political consensus – rather than risk it becoming a victim of partisanship during, or close to, a national election campaign. In this regard, the Holness Administration, particularly its constitutional and legal affairs minister, Marlene Malahoo Forte, owes the public an update, with greater clarity than she managed previously, on the Government’s programme for constitutional reform.

When she spoke on the subject in Parliament in June, Ms Malahoo Forte indicated her and the Government’s intention was to establish a committee to undertake a full review of the existing constitution, as well as the work and recommendations of previous constitutional commissions. Although she conceded a lack of enthusiasm by the political opposition for the idea, the minister said she intended to table a frame of reference for the committee’s work by the end of the current parliamentary year.

LONG UNDERTAKINGS

The problem here is that constitutional reform can be long, testy undertakings. It took well over a decade between the start of the work of the last constitutional review commission and Parliament’s 2011 passage of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, the last major addition to the Jamaican Constitution.

On the matter of the monarchy, Ms Malahoo Forte expected Jamaicans to vote in a referendum on the question “hopefully, by the time the next election comes around”. But there was a proviso. The issue could be derailed by “pressing matters” arising, “or something overtakes (it)”.

We have a number of concerns with this approach.

Jamaica’s next general election is constitutionally due towards the end of 2025. Given the complex process and long time required for amending deeply entrenched constitutional clauses – including the requirement that parliamentary decisions be endorsed by a referendum – the Government would need to act soon to meet the deadline of the next election, without being in a rush towards the end of the process.

Further, as have in other countries, as well as in Jamaica during the vote on the island’s future on the West Indies Federation, referenda can be fraught affairs. Often, these votes become less about the specific question on the ballot than a plebiscite on the incumbent administration.

We fear that would be the case if a referendum on the monarchy became part of a general election campaign. Consensus could be quickly consumed by partisanship. Prime Minister Holness, no doubt, has this concern. It is very possible, therefore, that given the shortening timeline, and the receding environment in which Government and Opposition might cooperate, “pressing matters” could arise to prevent a referendum this side of 2025.

NEED NOT BE DRAWN-OUT

Yet, this need not be a drawn-out, contentious affair. It is a simple matter of moving forward with the constitutional matters on which there is already agreement – and with others which can be easily done. The monarchy is the foremost of these.

Indeed, removing the Queen as Jamaica’s head of state isn’t merely peripheral symbolism. It is a clear declaration of who we are, and of our national aspirations. And this view of ourselves and national mission can’t be represented by a monarch resident in Great Britain, as nice an old lady as she might be, or her heirs and successors. The representative of Jamaican sovereignty should reside in Kingston and have more in common with the Jamaican people than the Mountbatten-Windsor family.

There is already consensus on this. The only hurdle to be crossed is how to choose the non-executive president who will replace the Queen – whether by a vote of both houses of Parliament sitting separately or together. That, as the former prime minister, P.J. Patterson, said, can be easily settled in a short meeting between Prime Minister Holness and the Opposition Leader Mark Golding.

On this, therefore, we endorse and repeat the June suggestion of the good governance organisation, National Integrity Action: “Separate the timetable for achieving consensus on a necessary comprehensive constitutional review from implementing the existing consensus on removing the Queen of England and establishing a Jamaican republic, with our own Head of State.”