As King Charles III donned the centuries-old St. Edward’s crown on Saturday, Jamaica, a member of the Commonwealth, continued to push forward with plans to cut ties with the British monarchy – a decision scheduled for a referendum in 2024.
“The time has come. Jamaica in Jamaican hands,” Marlene Malahoo Forte, Jamaica’s minister for legal and constitutional affairs, said in an interview with Sky News this week. “Time to say goodbye.”
She is part of a fifteen-member committee of civil servants and experts that is laying the foundations for amending the Jamaican constitution and deposing the British monarch as head of state on the Caribbean island.
Jamaica was also represented this week in a letter to King Charles, in which campaigners from 12 Commonwealth countries urged him to use his coronation to apologize for the “horrific consequences” of Britain’s imperial past, including “racism, oppression, colonialism and slavery”. The letter called for reparations and the return of all stolen cultural artifacts.
“The British have a tremendous opportunity” to address colonial injustices, said Rosalea Hamilton, a co-signer of the letter and founder and director of the Institute of Law and Economics, a nonprofit organization based in Kingston, the Jamaican capital. “After centuries of leading the world with this inhumanity, they can lead the world in repairing the damage.”
While its practical role in the island’s affairs may be small, the monarchy has left an uneasy legacy. All of the Queen’s functions, and now the King’s, are performed by a Governor-General who acts as their direct representative – who approves all legislation and determines who becomes Prime Minister.
“Some people would tell you it’s largely ceremonial, but I think that’s the wrong way to think about it,” said Tracy Robinson, a professor of constitutional law at the University of the West Indies. “It reflects the old prerogative power of the crown.”
On the part of the British government, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has refused to apologize for the country’s role in the transatlantic slave trade or to enter into discussions about paying reparations. “Trying to unravel our history is not the right way forward,” he told lawmakers in the UK Parliament in April, “and it is not something we will focus our energies on.”
Yet the constitutional reform process is pushing more people in Jamaica to think even beyond putting the British monarch on the water.
“When we say we want to get rid of the monarchy, that only tells you the starting point,” Ms Robinson said at a public panel this week. “It doesn’t tell you the destination or where we’ll end up.”
Among the questions that loom: If Charles III is out as Jamaica’s head of state, what kind of political system would follow?
“We’ve never asked and answered those questions before,” said Ms. Hamilton, who co-chairs the Advocates Network, an organization that has pushed for a national discussion about the transition to a republic. “For the first time in our history, can we really think about how to reform society in the interest of the majority?”
Clear answers are elusive. So far, the government commission – which has said a bill will be presented to parliament this month – has met largely in private.
If the legislation is not drafted with significant public participation, said Maziki Thame, a researcher at the University of the West Indies, decision-making could end up in the hands of a few. That would fall short of what many Jamaicans expect.
“Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s very important that you have our people in power,” she said. “At the same time, I want it to have substance as a representative of a democratic movement.”