The inevitable politicking aside, some use could come of the discussion about Mr Mark Golding’s status as a British citizen, and whether he would need to renounce it to become leader of Jamaica should his party form the next Government.

It’s a good time for the nation to have such discussions, we suggest, as the Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC) is deliberating on the way to republic status, and about what to keep and what to discard from the old order.

As things stand, the constitution allows citizens of the Commonwealth who are 21 and over and have lived for 12 months in Jamaica to sit in the House of Representatives and the Senate. This is not so for non-Commonwealth citizens.

There are two important points to consider here.

What makes citizens of the Commonwealth so special? There are many countries in the Commonwealth that have never had any serious association with Jamaica, yet they would not need to renounce their citizenship to become Members of Parliament or senators in Jamaica. There is no logic to that.

On the other hand, there is an abundance of talented Jamaicans living in the United States, a non-Commonwealth country, who are desirous of serving but would have been disqualified from sitting in our Parliament unless they renounced US citizenship.

In our resource-challenged state, can Jamaica afford to cut itself off from such a rich source of talent and expertise because of an antiquated provision that may have been merely self-serving to our colonial masters?

As a British citizen, Mr Golding would not have had to renounce his citizenship, unlike Mr Daryl Vaz who was forced to dispense with his US status after he was taken to court by Mr Abe Dabdoub in 2008.

In this respect, Mr Golding may be right in his view that “all Jamaican citizens [should] be eligible to sit in Parliament if they wish to serve, including Jamaicans who are dual citizens from non-Commonwealth countries. This will benefit Jamaica by further expanding the available talent pool in Parliament to include all our citizens”.

We suggest that the CRC should seriously consider amending the constitution to make it more relevant to Jamaica by opening the doors to all our nationals who can be of tremendous benefit to the country. Indeed, recent protest demonstrations in the Diaspora over the need for more engagement with the Government bear this out.

Where Mr Golding got his knickers in a knot, so to speak, was in insisting that republic status should be tied to accepting the appellate jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Appeal (CCJ), and describing the alternative as having “one foot in and one foot out of King Charles’ yard”.

Jamaica is already a member of the CCJ in its original jurisdiction and has benefited from its work (remember the 2013 case of Shanique Myrie v Barbados?). We are just not yet using the CCJ as a final court of appeal, while our badly flawed judicial system struggles to come up to speed.

Such a monumental decision should not be forced on the nation, as Mr Golding seems to want to do. We should let the discussions play out as the CRC is saying. At the end, the Jamaican people should make that determination in a referendum.

We know politicians would love to usurp this role, but that would be a great travesty.