Legal and Constitutional Affairs Minister Mrs Marlene Malahoo Forte
March 25, 2025
No need for all this coyness over referendum, Mrs Malahoo Forte
Wanting, apparently, to spare us the potential stress and excitement over the lack of agreement between the two major political parties on republic status, the Government chose a soft announcement — that the associated referendum will not accompany the general election this year.
Legal and Constitutional Affairs Minister Mrs Marlene Malahoo Forte opted for the Jamaica Information Service (JIS) Think Tank on March 19, 2025 to tell the country that a referendum — a critical part of the transition process from a constitutional monarchy to a republic — will have to await a referendum Bill setting out the procedure for taking the vote.
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Such an important announcement ought to have been made with greater fanfare, we suggest, because there have been calls for the referendum to be held at the same time as the election, largely to save on the huge cost of staging such a plebiscite.
Cost did not seem, however, to be the issue for Mrs Malahoo Forte, because she did not mention it. The most we could deduce from her statement reported by the JIS is that “sufficiently educating the people of Jamaica about the reform process, so that their participation is well informed, is of high priority”.
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She also added: “Before we get to the actual holding of the referendum, we will have to design questions for the people to answer in the vote and that is not yet done, because we are paying very close attention to attempts by other countries, what has worked and what has not worked well.”
It is more than that, we feel certain.
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The governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) are still fighting over whether to drop the United Kingdom Privy Council and adopt the appellate jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as Jamaica’s final court of appeal.
The JLP is opposed to going the CCJ route while the PNP says it wants the CCJ as a condition of supporting Jamaica becoming a republic.
We are also aware that the two parties cannot agree on how to elect a president.
Mrs Malahoo Forte was being unnecessarily coy and could have been more forthcoming in her JIS announcement.
The failure to get both parties to see eye to eye is not her fault. They rarely ever do, even when it’s in the best interest of the country. The JLP and the PNP may never agree on the road to republic status.
All that aside, the minister should feel assured that one good thing that has come out of the discussion is the decision not to have the referendum accompany the election — the two should never be so done, at least not until our electorate demonstrates the requisite level of maturity.
A referendum — which would only be the second to be held since 1961 — on whether to leave the monarchy and become a republic, should not be held hostage to the undying political tribalism of the Jamaican electorate, a disease that afflicts even people who claim to be intellectuals.
If the two are carried out together, it will save money, but the decision will be made bereft of the consequences and without the depth of thinking necessary, as party supporters vote mindlessly in accordance with what their leaders tell them.
And, yes, it will take a serious level of public education — not the sad excuse we see in most government efforts — to bring our people to the point at which they can separate parliamentary elections from a referendum on republic status.
