Former Prime Minister PJ Patterson has suggested a Vale Royal-type lock-in between Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Opposition Leader Mark Golding until agreement is reached on critical aspects of the constitutional reform process.

“My view is, the political leadership should meet; there is absolutely no reason, I know of no just cause or impediment why Prime Minister Andrew Holness and the Leader of the Opposition Mr Mark Golding, and their respective teams, cannot gather in a suitable facility while Vale Royal is being repaired and get a supply of food and drink and bedding if necessary. If you have to get some rooms in a hotel, so let it be, it’s worth it, the country needs it,” Patterson argued on Wednesday as the featured speaker at a forum billed as a ‘Reasoning about the Jamaican Constitution’ staged by The University of the West Indies at its Faculty of Law.

Patterson was responding to a question from Opposition spokeswoman on justice Donna Scott-Mottley about whether, given the stalemate, it was time for a Vale Royal meeting or for surrogates to be brought into play.

Scott-Mottley is one of the Opposition members of the Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC) who have refused to sign the report of that body which was since tabled in Parliament.

The Opposition has insisted that if adoption of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as Jamaica’s final court is not taken into account in phase one of the reform, it will go no further with the discussions.

“Lock down in there and don’t move until you get agreement, and if you need to call anybody on the side for a little help there are people that both sides can identify to call in and help. There must be a way, we have to find it,” Patterson said.

“It’s one Jamaica; we show we are capable of greatness. I am not suggesting that political contest cease and rivalry and debate discontinue. What I am saying is that there are some issues that are compelling… we are destroying ourselves,” he declared.

Prime Minister Holness, in April last year, named the members of the CRC, which is co-chaired by Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs Marlene Malahoo Forte and Ambassador Rocky Meade. The body, among other things, was required to assess how the passage of time has impacted the recommendations of the 1995 joint select committee on the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Report with the work being done in three phases.

According to the Jamaica Labour Party Administration, the first phase of reform will involve replacing the British monarch as head of state with a Jamaican president. The Opposition, however, is insisting that a decision on the country’s final court must also be made in tandem.

On Wednesday, Patterson, in insisting that common ground must be found, said, “If the two leaders can’t agree, or can’t find a way of talking with each other, they have to find surrogates and authorise them to do the communication between themselves in accordance with the instructions that they are given.

“If there is such a personality clash between the two leaders we cannot afford that to be to the detriment of the national interest of the country, we must find a way if we say we love Jamaica, and I think we do, if we say we want to advance the welfare of Jamaica, and I think we do, then we must find a way of getting it done,” he said.

Patterson, who had expressed discomfort with the proposed two-tiered method of appointment of the president of the Jamaican republic by the committee among other issues, noted further, “If we cannot find some way of agreeing on a head of state that commands popular support then we are not worthy of the sacrifices that our ancestors made in bringing us where we are today.”

“It’s not easy, but it can be done, it must be done, Jamaica demands, needs urgently, some symbol that there is some source of uniting us. It cannot be a foreign monarch. It has to be one of our own that represents what our people stand for and aspire to be, and I think we can find it. We must insist that our leaders meet and continue to dialogue and if they can’t do it, they find people and authorise them to do it on their behalf,” he said.

Patterson, in the meantime, expressed regret that during the long-ranging debates preceding the rewrite of Chapter III of the constitution creating the passage of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms in 2011, “the Opposition did not insist, as a quid pro quo, that simultaneously with the passage of the Charter of Rights should be a removal of the Privy Council”.

In insisting that history must not repeat itself, the former prime minister said, “Now you are passing a new Charter of Rights and you are giving a foreign court the right to interpret what those rights are, and I say, simply put, the Opposition must be reasonable, but the Opposition must also demand that it gets what is best for the country in return for some steps forward that are being made to advance the rights of the people.”

“I think there are some things that can command agreement; I think the Privy Council is one of them. I hope, now that the report has been laid, we are going to find a way of having more public discourse and I think it will have to be; it will take some time to have it properly organised but I don’t think the inputs should be confined purely to the political directorate,” said Patterson, who is a staunch proponent of the CCJ being Jamaica’s apex court.

He, in the meantime, pointed out that the changes being contemplated would mean going to the populace more than once.

“First of all understand, you couldn’t have one referendum, you would have to have referenda. To change the constitution, including clauses that deal with entrenchment, you have to have, legally, a referendum. That’s one. The thing about the Privy Council can’t be in there because it’s not entrenched, so you have to have what is called an indicative referendum,” the respected legal luminary schooled.