KINGSTON, Jamaica -Opposition Leader and President of the People’s National Party (PNP), Mark Golding, has declared that his party will not support the removal of King Charles as Jamaica’s head of state without Jamaica also severing ties from the UK-based Privy Council at the same time.

This declaration, made Sunday at the PNP’s 85th annual conference at the National Arena, signals that the Government’s constitutional reform process could be in trouble.

It requires a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the monarch to be removed as head of state, it being a deeply entrenched provision of the constitution.

While the Andrew Holness-led Government has a super majority in the House, it will need the vote of one Opposition senator to be able to enact the change.

On Sunday, Golding insisted that the PNP supported constitutional reform, remarking that “the constitution is not a meal deal, it is a big deal.”

“As a first step, we must reform the constitution to complete the decolonisation process. We need to decolonise Jamaica once and for all,” he stated.

He added that “we in the PNP have no interest in moving to a republic while retaining the King’s Privy Council in London as Jamaica’s final court. That does not make sense to any progressive person.”

Golding added further that “Jamaicans need a final court where they don’t need a visa to go there and where the costs of attending court are not way out of their reach. Time come for a Jamaican head of state and a Caribbean Court of Justice as our final court; decolonisation now.”

He emphasised that “we the People’s National Party will support both moving forward together. We have no interest in one without the other.”