Malahoo Forte wants ‘referendum’ insulated from regular elections

WESTERN BUREAU:

MINISTER OF Legal and Constitutional Affairs Marlene Malahoo Forte has given an assurance that the referendum, which is needed to transform Jamaica into a republic, will not be held at the same time as the country’s general or local government elections.

While speaking at Wednesday’s constitutional reform town hall meeting at St Elizabeth Technical High School in Santa Cruz, St Elizabeth, Malahoo Forte, who leads the Constitutional Reform Committee, said that efforts are being made to get a bill into the current Parliament for the motion to be passed to that effect.

“We know that mid-December 2025 is the outer date for the general election, and of late, we have not gone to the outer date. Then we have the local government elections that are due, as they were postponed with an outer date of February 2024, and we are now in July 2023,” said Malahoo Forte.

“The constitution contemplated all of this, and it is quite permissible to have the referendum in another parliament. So, we can pass the law in this parliament and carry the referendum over to the next parliament,” Malahoo Forte added. “I think the makers of the constitution had a high level of wisdom about the political space and the length of time it would take. Having said that, we are working to get a bill in the parliament to enable it to be passed in the life of this parliament, subject to our completing our consultation and public education.”

Malahoo Forte, who was responding to concerns from the town hall’s attendees about the potential for the passage of the referendum to come close to the staging of the local government elections and the general election, said the ruling Jamaica Labour Party [JLP] and the Opposition People’s National Party [PNP] cannot afford to make a competition out of the referendum ahead of either election.

“It is not the intention of the government to have the referendum mixed up with either the local government elections or the general election. We know that in that space it is a competitive space, and one side is going to seek the advantage, because, at the end of the day, you are seeking a win,” said Malahoo Forte.

“It is going to require a lot of maturity and a mature conversation between the ruling JLP and the opposition PNP. It would be a travesty if we went to the people competing on the issue of abolishing King Charles III, the king of Jamaica, as our head of state,” added Malahoo Forte.

Ambassador Rocky Meade, who co-chairs the Constitutional Reform Committee, told the gathering that the ongoing town halls on constitutional reform are part of the educational process for the public to fully understand how the referendum will work.

“We want to complete this process of hearing from the people. We may not be able to get to every individual Jamaican, but we are going around the country so we can get a sense that we have heard the voice of the people,” said Meade. “At some point, when we think we have heard quite a lot of varied recommendations, we will share that with the public to say, ‘This is what we have heard from you so far, is there anything else?’ so that we are satisfied that we have your perspective.”

The Constitutional Reform Committee, which was named by Prime Minister Andrew Holness on March 22 this year, is expected to guide the three-part constitutional reform process, which includes placing focus on the repatriation of the constitution, abolition of the constitutional monarchy, and establishment of republican status.