Scott-Mottley raises concerns over PM’s ‘not your birth that makes you Jamaican’ comment
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Opposition Senator Donna Scott-Mottley has raised concerns surrounding remarks made by Prime Minister Andrew Holness during Thursday’s election debates that it is not your birth that makes you a Jamaican.
Holness made the remark after People’s National Party (PNP) President Mark Golding displayed his birth certificate while addressing comments targeting his renounced British citizenship which was brought up during the debate.
“It is indeed of concern that it was not until your 40s, when you were becoming a minister of government, you sought to have a Jamaican passport. It is not your birth that makes you Jamaican. It is the choices you make for your country, including supporting a process that would make a Jamaican head of state here [in Jamaica], including getting a Jamaican passport,” Holness declared Thursday night.
READ: Golding shows his ‘birth paper’ at election debate
But Scott Mottley said the prime minister’s comments have raised concerns for several Jamaicans.
“This morning, children woke up asking their parents, ‘Am I a Jamaican mommy? Am I a Jamaican daddy?’ Adults went to bed last night confused as to what exactly the prime minister meant when he said you can be born here and not be Jamaican. This is the most concerning word. The most concerning statement that came out of that debate. When you watched the leader of that country throw shade, throw dirt in the face of every Jamaican who values this country of their birth,” she said in a PNP press conference on Friday.
Mottley continued, “The most important thing to all of us is to be able to say ‘I man born yah, I man on yah’. Just proudly declaring that we are Jamaicans. For this reason, it even highlights even more that our leader Mark Golding presented his birth certificate and showed everyone, everywhere, all over the world that he was born in Jamaica. Shattering the myth on which the Jamaica Labour Party has framed its campaign. A campaign which is embedded in racial hostility which defies our motto ‘out of many, one people’, which is a slap in the face of every well-thinking Jamaican. I am a Jamaican. I’m born here. I value it, and I will not make the words of one person try to strip me of my identity.”
