LEGAL luminary Hugh Small, King’s Counsel, has poured cold water on the deliberations of the joint select committee of Parliament now reviewing the Bill paving the way for Jamaica to become a republic and replace Britain’s King Charles III with a Jamaican president.

Speaking briefly at the sixth Mona Law public debate at The University of the West Indies, Mona on Monday where students argued the moot, “The republican president should be a non-partisan symbol of national unity”, Small said, “I do not think that the current exercise that’s taking place in Parliament is going anywhere”.

Small was ironically consultant counsel and nominee of the leader of the Opposition to the Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC), which played the lead role in framing the recommendations that will guide the transformation of Jamaica from a constitutional monarchy into a republic, and among other things, the process for amending the constitution.

According to Small, however, his misgivings about the process were not heeded by the committee, a factor he said is reminiscent of the birth of the Jamaican Constitution in 1962 which had “little or no input…by the people of Jamaica” at the time .

“Even the process that is going on now, and I am speaking as somebody who has been on the Constitutional Reform Committee and has been expressing these views, you will see nothing of it reflected,” he said.

“We have to think about what we need to do to engage the people if we are really talking about democracy and representation. I sincerely hope that we find a way of engaging the public in a discussion that is going to give the subject of constitutional reform real life at the grass roots level other than as a partisan issue,” the respected jurist said.

Added Small: “More than 60 per cent of people entitled to vote at elections have opted out of the system. It’s less than a third or about a third of the people who are participating in elections. Presumably when we go to have the most important stage, the only stage that can take us into a presidential system if we have the same trend, it’s a minority of the Jamaican people who are now engaged”.

In March of 2023 Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness announced the names of the members of the CRC. The committee submitted its report to Cabinet in May of 2024. It was tabled in Parliament that same month. The joint select committee of Parliament has been reviewing the Bill since the start of this year; however, the parliamentary Opposition has backed out saying it will not resume participation until certain questions are answered.

According to the Opposition, while it is in favour of replacing the British monarch with a Jamaican head of State, its support for the process is tied to Jamaica’s departure from the United Kingdom-based Privy Council and accession to the Caribbean Court of Justice as the country’s final appeal court.

The Government has countered, with the Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs Marlene Malahoo Forte, who is leading the process, continuing to argue that it is best to achieve the reform in phases.

The Government intends to hold a referendum relating to Jamaica’s proposed transition.

On Monday, Government Senator Sherene Golding Campbell, also speaking ahead of Small at the session, said she was of the view that “the entire structure of government and how we arrange our affairs needed to be seriously reformed”.

“How we do that is another conversation; the president is one thing, but if our systems work then we don’t need to be building institutions upon institutions,” she said.

Noting that the push towards a republican president who is non-partisan and a symbol of national unity “has a lot to do with the very divisive, partisan politics that we have experienced in our independent years”, Golding Campbell said, “I would also offer the view that it is even more than just the structure of the president or how the proposed president is going to be appointed or removed, that it ought to have at the heart of it, a consideration of whether the structure of our government as it is now is appropriate in the first place”.

“I offer the view that we currently have municipal corporations where the very local representation of our people and our communities sit. We also have the Members of Parliament on a constituency-wide basis and I wonder if the parish council system was operating at its optimal, where people felt that their local community leaders really offered effective representation, where local community leaders were truly empowered to offer effective representation if we would need a president at all. It’s a wider conversation I am suggesting,” she stated while making it clear that the views she expressed were her own.