In one of her recent public engagements in Port Antonio, the chairperson of the Constitutional Reform Committee and Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs Marlene Malahoo Forte indicated that the Government was hoping to propose a hybrid president for Jamaica. In her definition, a hybrid president would execute ceremonial and executive functions. The details of this, I suspect, are to come, as no indication of how this would work was spelt out.

At first blush, this seems to be an unnecessary complication of the reform process. Will there be a prime minister as well as a hybrid president? If the answer is yes, it means the people are being asked to wade through the complications of the executive functions of the prime minister as distinct from those that will be allocated to the president. Is this not an unnecessary complication of an already confusing process? Why put the people through these gyrations? It shows a committee clutching at straws or, at any rate, not deeply aware of what the people of Jamaica are asking for, in terms of a new kind of governance and accountability system for our country that will radically transform how we have governed ourselves since 1962.

The committee seems to continue to misunderstand that the kind of change we seek, whether expressed openly or in the silence of the heart, is one that will repatriate real sovereignty to the people and not the Parliament. The present cosmetic arrangements have not worked, and in my humble opinion, will not work.

Let me state as plainly as I can what I believe the rudiments or contours of this radical transformation should look like. In the first instance, it cannot be anything resembling the present arrangement. It cannot be accepted that we get rid of King Charles III and thus the governor general and his trappings and institute a person with the same ceremonial functions that we are seeking to replace. To put it bluntly, this would be “swapping black dog for monkey”, as my forebears would remind.

If we are going to retain the post of prime minister, such a person must be directly elected from the people. This means anyone can run, whether they have party affiliation or not. If one wants to use a political party as a mechanism to gain power as prime minister, so be it. But not being affiliated to a political party should not preclude any citizen of sound mind and character from running. He or she should not be chosen by a party’s parliamentary majority.

The separation of the powers of the executive (elected prime minister or president) and the legislature (the Parliament) must be clearly defined. The same principle applies to an executive president. Thus, my choice is not for a ceremonial president or any hybrid form. By the way, I have a hybrid Mars rover to sell the person who came up with this cockeyed notion of a hybrid presidency. A ceremonial president would be an unnecessary drag on the nation’s budget. What we need is an executive presidency which has similar functions to those that would be conferred on an elected prime minister.

The accent for democratic governance here is that of separating the powers of the executive and the Parliament. Here the Parliament would exercise oversight over the functions of the executive, especially in the vetting of Cabinet appointments and other appointments to important offices in the land.

The Parliament would not be the mere rubber stamp that it is presently, whereby a prime minister at will can upend any opposition by declaring, on his own whim, the calling of parliamentary elections. No one person in Jamaica should have this untrammeled power. He and the Parliament must be subject to scrutiny and to the power of recall by the people.

The present arrangement has made a virtual dictator of the prime minister, a position not vastly different from that conferred on some church leaders by their national or denominational constitutions. For me, the Anglican Church comes clearly into view. The disaggregation of power with a view to real accountability must be clearly seen. We can have no meaningful change if we merely get rid of King Charles III and his local representative and replace him and his functions with a local dictator as we now have in the present Westminster arrangement.

What we are calling for is real accountability from those in whom we repose power and our future. The people who elect them, who give them the job to govern, must set the rules. People drunk with power cannot be relied upon to write rules that subject themselves to accountability. You do not give someone a job and then ask him to write his job description. This is why the massive increase in salaries to our politicians smells to many like rotting fish gut in Alligator Pond. This should have been independently determined.

So, too, is the matter of the Cabinet members’ refusal to sign the code of conduct initiated by the Integrity Commission that was given responsibility, under law, to do so. Members of such an august body are certainly not children, but throwing a tantrum over such a matter smacks of childishness.

The Cabinet and the prime minister must be reminded that they are the people’s servants. In a revamped system of accountability, there should be no doubt to whom these servants are answerable.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the books Finding Peace in the Midst of Life’s Storms; The Self-esteem Guide to a Better Life; and Beyond Petulance: Republican Politics and the Future of America. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.