Maroon query triggers testy CRC exchange

A QUESTION over whether the Government has consulted with the Maroons in the ongoing constitutional reform process triggered a testy exchange between Marlene Malahoo Forte and Steven Golding after the legislator asserted emphatically that Jamaica is a unitary state.

Golding, the president of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), raised the subject during the question and answer segment of a constitutional reform discussion at The Mico University College yesterday.

Golding argued that the Maroons, who had a treaty with the British centuries before Jamaica gained independence in 1962, were largely ignored in the modernising of the Constitution.

“It has continued for 60 years. Is the reformation of this Constitution going to address the mistakes of the past?” Golding questioned.

Malahoo Forte, the minister of legal and constitutional affairs who co-chairs the Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC), called the issue thorny, a description Golding interjected was adopted by the Government from the British.

“I don’t profess to have the specific knowledge you have. You are a Garvey scholar and you have studied deeply on issues. But what I do know is that we have to have regard to the Constitution that we have now, and there is no state within the State of Jamaica. It’s a unitary state. We’re not a federal state,” the minister said.

She said that the rights that have been accorded to the Maroons have “by and large” been observed in terms of land settlements.

But Golding interrupted, noting that he was not advocating for a state within a state before he was, in turn, cut off by Malahoo Forte, who insisted that that was the position he was arguing for.

However, the UNIA president rejected the argument, repeating that the group was not brought to the table when the current Constitution was being drafted and argued that a reform of it now must include the Maroons.

“We should not continue in that path, completely ignoring the fact that they fought a war for their liberation that they were granted a treaty and at the time of ‘62 because we didn’t want to really deal with that issue, we ignored it, and we assumed that the culture and society would forget at some point,” he said.

“That is why they are agitating now. So, ‘Are they being brought to the table?’ is what I’m asking,” Golding said, pressing for an answer.

In response, Malahoo Forte said the CRC had been engaging with all Jamaicans but faced a swift rebuttal from Golding, who argued that her answer was “very political”.

“Please don’t insult my intelligence because there is nothing political or cosmetic in what we are doing,” Malahoo Forte inserted.

DOUBLED DOWN

Still, Golding doubled down, insisting that the minister say definitively whether the Maroons had been engaged in the process.

The heated exchange broke when CRC member, attorney-at-law Laleta Davis Mattis, intervened, noting that there was a three-part process to reforming the Constitution and that several Jamaicans and groups were already engaged in making representation.

She said those groups included the Tainos, who have already submitted a document.

“They have been asserting themselves, and they are saying that we exist despite what you have in history books,” she said, adding that the role of the committee is to hear from various groups.

The Gleaner contacted Marcia Douglas, acting colonel of the Charles Town Maroons, who said that she was not aware of the CRC engaging the Maroons but referred the newspaper to the group’s attorney, Marcus Goffe.

Goffe could not be reached for comment.

Attempts to reach Richard Currie, chief of the Accompong Town Maroons, were unsuccessful.