Editorial | Vale Royal and the Constitution

Notwithstanding this newspaper’s call for Jamaica to rethink who can be Parliament’s Speaker, there is no sign that a break in the deadlock between the Government and the Opposition on constitutional reform is imminent.

So, while both sides agree that Jamaica should ditch the monarchy to become a republic, an impasse remains over the process for electing a president as head of state; whether Jamaica should leave the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) as the final court ahead of dislodging the Crown; and whether the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) should replace the Privy Council as Jamaica’s apex court. This logjam won’t be removed in the absence of serious talks.

In that regard, The Gleaner’s Editorial Board again recommends that Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness reconvene the Vale Royal talks with Opposition Leader Mark Golding on a range of sensitive national issues, including constitutional reform. That would be in keeping with what the prime minister signalled would happen in the aftermath of the September 2025 general election.

“Mark, let us partner together to complete the work we started in making Jamaica a republic,” Dr Holness said in his post-election swearing-in speech. However, that public gesture hit an early snag when the prime minister instructed that Mr Golding should first have preliminary discussions with his justice and constitutional affairs minister, Delroy Chuck, before the meeting of the two leaders.

PULLING RANK

There was a widespread assumption that Dr Holness was pulling rank, notwithstanding his subsequent ameliorating explanation in the face of criticism. However, sufficient time ought to have passed for there to be a clear-eyed recognition of the need for practical approaches, including finding consensus where possible, to the problems that confront Jamaica. This should mean that there should be no barriers to the leaders of the island’s major political parties of near-equal political strength engaging in face-to-face dialogue in a search for solutions.

Indeed, on the question of Jamaica becoming a republic, constitutional limitations mean that it can’t happen without the support of the Opposition. At the same time, Mr Golding’s People’s National Party insists that republican status should be directly tied to Jamaica acceding to the criminal and civil jurisdictions of the CCJ. And, after years of waffling on the question, Prime Minister Holness recently made clear that his preference was a purely Jamaican final court, rather than the CCJ.

These are critical fault lines that must be bridged if Jamaica is to move forward on the constitutional issues. That is why Dr Holness should meet urgently with Mr Golding to set a new reform agenda, including what may be salvaged from the work of the committee that sat between 2023 and 2024.

The Gleaner’s Editorial Board also suggests that leaders place on the agenda of any new constitutional committee a revised structure for the Senate, including having non-partisan or independent senators, as well as exploring Canada’s experiment of people applying for Senate appointments.

MAKES LITTLE SENSE

As we have noted, failing to engage in direct talks on the status of the monarchy in Jamaica’s constitutional arrangement, as well as the future of the Privy Council, makes little sense if whoever is in government seriously wants to move the process forward.

That the British monarch is Jamaica’s head of state is a deeply entrenched clause in the island’s Constitution. Removing the monarchy and replacing the position with a president not only requires that a relevant constitutional amendment bill sit on the table of the House for months before debate and for months after the debate before being voted on, but also that it must pass with a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Parliament. That vote count means that, even if the Government has the two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives and all its 13 members in the 21-seat Senate vote in favour, it has to receive at least one vote from an Opposition member to clear the two-thirds hurdle. After that, Parliament’s decision would have to be confirmed in a referendum.

Meanwhile, although the JCPC can be removed by a majority of all members of Parliament, a Privy Council judgment essentially held that its replacement by a court higher than Jamaica’s Court of Appeal would mean that it would have to be similarly entrenched as the domestic appeal court. That means the two-thirds majority, and the relative hurdles thereto, would be in play.

The numerical configuration of the Jamaican Senate provides an in-built check on governmental power, especially with respect to its ability to recklessly tinker with the Constitution. But it is also true that the tribal politicisation of the Senate has led to periods of deep partisanship in the chamber, instead of the reflective discourse expected of the Upper House.

One way to remedy this is to allow the governor general/president, in conjunction with civil society organisations, to appoint independent senators in a configuration that doesn’t restrict the Government’s ability to pass ordinary bills. However, it would have to persuade either Opposition members or independents, or both, to pass legislation that requires super-majorities.