JAMAICA | Justice Only For The Wealthy: A Solomonic Constitutional Tabling?

KINGSTON. Jamaica, December 22, 2024 - The prevailing circumstances and the clear motives behind the Government's recent introduction of a bill in Parliament ostensibly to initiate the process of abandoning the monarchy have ushered Jamaica into a constitutional and cultural connundrum, cunningly contrived for political gain.

Like all humans, Andrew Holness and Mark Golding are imperfect and 'shortcomings' can always be found on the hustings for true and deserved complaints against either.

There is no need for any 'blame' or 'fault' that is false and cunningly contrived.

Part of the upcoming national elections campaign has ripened into "Markie British versus Integrity Brogad": the wealthy White 'Englishman', according to the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), against the wealthy Black Jamaican, according to the People's National Party (PNP).

Contrived issues infused into a political campaign by subterfuge are perhaps at their most sinister when anchored on tribal games being played with the country's Constitution.

Since Emancipation, the Jamaican descendants of slaves have struggled without the valuable benefit of their entitlement to access to the final court in the United Kingdom.

Delinking from the British monarch and from the Privy Council is essential to Jamaica gaining full independence, and consensus across the aisle in Parliament is indispensable for the required constitutional transition.

Abandoning the monarchy, though desired and must be pursued, brings no tangible gift to Jamaicans.

Leaving the Privy Council to embrace the Caribbean Court of Justice, however, conveys immediate discernible benefit to our too-long-deprived citizens.

The gift to our people to enjoy that benefit of access to final justice is exclusively in the hands of the leaders in Gordon House.

Unlike Andrew Holness, Mark Golding is fighting a resolute battle to have that privilege become available to our people who are not wealthy. Unimaginably, with stark untruthfulness, injustice is frightfully being directed against him.

Even more piercing injustice is being meted out to Jamaicans by their government's insistence that access to justice that is dispensed from a court in London should remain available only to the wealthy.

Can it really be ignored that the clear evidence discloses no intention whatsoever on the part of the leadership for Jamaica to leave the Privy Council?

They strangely receive support from some members of the legal profession, defying the settled stance of the Jamaican Bar Association and the Organisation of Commonwealth Caribbean Bar Associations which parented the visionary transition from the British to the regional court.

Proprietors of a flagship tourism conglomerate which operates within Jamaica and parts of the Caribbean where the CCJ is the final appeal court inconceivably proclaim that "the time has not yet come" for Jamaicans to join that court.

Even from the church community, open public support flows from a Reverend and from a Deacon indicating, unchristianlike, that the wealthy alone should continue to enjoy unhindered access to final justice.

Wonder what Reverend Knibb and Deacon Bogle would have had to say?

From no quarter has come any plausible reason for the awkward resistance. There is usually little engaging comment, so that, as the lawyers would say, the irresistible inference is that, in their haughtiness, they do not trust their own to dispense justice from the CCJ.

Were it otherwise, would they not push for transition to our accessible globally respected court pending arrangements suitable to their preference, for example, of a local final court?

The permanent stain of constitutional disorderliness started with the JLP leadership kicking to the kerb the Privy Council's ruling on the matter, which had been sought by themselves and others.

Arrogating unto themselves superior power and authority, they brushed aside the declaration by the highest judges of a consensus-driven two-thirds majority vote in each House for transitioning to the CCJ, and proceeded to substitute their own requirement of a referendum.

That position was concretised by the Holness-led JLP even after the PNP, in government, had dutifully developed the Charter of Rights, and later co-operated with the Bruce Golding administration in the Legislature for its entrenchment.

The courts pronounced that Andrew Holness, joined by some individuals who now hold high office within his administration, unlawfully meddled with the constitutional arrangements for Senate membership to thwart a positive vote to open the door of access to Jamaica's economically challenged citizens.

That unbending position surfaced once again in the mandate to their Constitutional Reform Committee that delinking from the Privy Council should be contemplated only at some nebulous future season, referred to as Phase Two.

So, armed with that gripping body of evidence, would the Mark Golding-led Opposition PNP not be grossly derelict in unforgivably becoming complicit in this brazen course of shameless betrayal of the majority of Jamaicans who are nowhere near wealthy?

Could they, in all conscience, agree to Jamaica moving to republican status without any guarantee for Jamaicans ever to become unshackled from the denial of access to final justice, to which their humanity entitles them?

Then comes the explosive bomb! Spuriously, table a bill in the Parliament to initiate the process for Jamaica to become a republic, knowing that the PNP Opposition will resist any movement forward without that public guardrail guarantee from the ruling party, which certainly will not be forthcoming: Machiavellian!

Bingo! See? "Markie British blocks Jamaica from becoming a republic, wanting Jamaica to remain attached to his beloved England!".

Vloggers spring into action to eagerly disseminate the engineered deception, blissfully unaware that Mark Golding seeks to protect their interest, to uplift them and their fellow Jamaicans.

Whatever the wholesomeness or otherwise of the wider campaign message, on this long-running issue, ruthless injustice aimed schemingly at Mark Golding, and the historic continued shafting of Jamaicans by their government are abhorrent, simply unworthy.

Justice only for the wealthy in Jamaica: Tabling of a Solomonic Christmas present 2024? Unforgettable!

AJ NICHOLSON

-30-