Monarchy, Republicanism and the Privy Council
Audio Version (to download right-click and 'Save link as...')
- Speaker(s):
- His Excellency Judge Patrick Robinson, C.D. In collaboration with the Jamaican High Commission
- Event date:
- Tuesday 19 June 2012
Institute of Commonwealth Studies
- Description
-
The presentation begins with an examination of the historical context in which questions relating to the Monarchy, republicanism and the Privy Council arise in the 50 the year of Jamaica's Independence. It locates these issues in the struggle for freedom and independence by the slave and other ancestors of Jamaicans.
It asserts that a monarchical system is inherently undemocratic and unsuitable in this age for a newly independent state; it argues that the Monarchy is inappropriate and irrelevant to Jamaica; Jamaica should have healthy relations with the UK but not with the Queen as the Head of State; Jamaica and the UK can maintain and develop their relationships, political, economic, and otherwise with Jamaica as a republic within the Commonwealth; the Monarchy and the Privy Council are the wrong symbols to be at the apex of Jamaica's political and judicial systems.
Jamaica has lawyers and judges fit to be judges in a final appellate body, which should be the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), a court which has been off to a splendid start.
The replacement of the Monarchy with a republic and the Privy Council with the CCJ would be a fitting tribute to the struggles of the ancestors of Jamaicans and is the natural and logical outcome of the process they started when the slaves won their Emancipation in 1834.
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