Dear Editor,

I am compelled to write in defence of Member of Parliament (MP) Dr Angela Brown Burke. The public outrage over her handling of the parliamentary mace, in my opinion, has missed the real issue.

Firstly, it shouldn’t have taken this bold woman to do what is a man’s job. She addressed a colonial elephant in the room, and I don’t think we should allow “old house fi tumble dung pon her”; that old house we call Parliament. Her move is an act of political bravery, not unlike that of MP Marlene Malahoo Forte’s.

On Dr Brown Burke’s part: Yes, she breached a Standing Order. Yes, only the marshal may legally handle the mace when the House is in session. But legality is not morality. Slavery was legal. Jim Crow was legal. Colonial subjugation was legal. The question we should be asking is not: Did she break a rule? Instead, we should ask: Is the rule itself just, and is the symbol it protects worthy of our reverence?

The mace is not a neutral parliamentary tool, it is a direct inheritance from Westminster — a ceremonial weapon carried before the monarch, a constant physical reminder that Jamaica’s legislature still operates under Crown authority. For a nation that fought for Independence to genuflect before this colonial totem is a choice, not a necessity.

The mace remains in place because of political inertia, not constitutional requirement. Parliament can amend its Standing Orders by simple majority. We could replace the mace tomorrow with a symbol rooted in Jamaican heritage — an Adinkra emblem, a sculpture of the national bird, or simply a modern voting indicator. No constitutional reform is needed to remove a ritual object.

So what did Dr Brown Burke actually do? She lifted the mace from under the table, where it sits during committee sessions, and put it back. She interrupted no vote, harmed no person. Her action — whatever her immediate intent — functioned as political speech, a symbolic breach designed to expose the absurd sanctity we afford a colonial relic.

In mature democracies, such acts of civil disobedience have a long and honourable history. To suspend her and demand a “swift and unreserved public apology” is to treat a broken ritual as more sacred than the democratic substance it supposedly upholds.

The real indecency is not touching the mace, it is maintaining an unexamined colonial symbol while calling ourselves a sovereign nation. Dr Brown Burke may have been procedurally wrong, but she was politically and morally right to challenge a relic that deserves to be retired.

Yannick Nesta Pessoa

yannickpessoa@yahoo.com