Jamaica Could Copy & Paste From Others That Did It Before, But Even That Is Too Difficult

Frustrated with pol­i­tics, a young man a few days ago told me he believes that polit­i­cal par­ties should be done away with.
Curious, out of the same frus­tra­tion he shared, I asked him what his solu­tion to polit­i­cal par­ties was. He believes indi­vid­ual can­di­dates should be vot­ed into office based on their beliefs and ideas with­out par­ty affiliations.
I was intrigued by the idea but quick­ly caught myself when I won­dered how 435 mem­bers in the US Congress and 100 Senators, all with dif­fer­ent plat­forms, oper­at­ing inde­pen­dent­ly, would work.
It would­n’t!
People are so fed up with politi­cians that they have decid­ed to try any­thing to get their busi­ness attend­ed to. In the United States, enough peo­ple turned out in 2016 to elect Donald J Trump President through the twist­ed elec­toral col­lege process.
Trump lost the pop­u­lar vote by over 7 mil­lion votes but still became pres­i­dent, some­thing George Bush had done in 2000.
By 2020 American vot­ers turned out in record num­bers to cor­rect their mon­u­men­tal error of elect­ing Trump, whose lega­cy will be one that will live in infamy.
See our open dis­cus­sion on polic­ing, crime, and pol­i­tics in the youtube anti-crime forum in link here https://​www​.face​book​.com/​m​i​k​e​.​b​e​c​k​l​e​s.9

The frus­tra­tions that peo­ple get from politi­cians are entire­ly under­stand­able. In tiny Jamaica, for instance, noth­ing gets done for the peo­ple with­out grand­stand­ing and posturing.
Take, for instance, the crit­i­cal issue of con­sti­tu­tion­al reform that is bad­ly need­ed if Jamaicans are gen­uine­ly to be able to gov­ern them­selves. After much push­ing and prod­ding from many quar­ters and reg­u­lar folks like this writer, the Governing par­ty announced that they had begun con­ver­sa­tions about unteth­er­ing the Island from Britain a year ago.
What that process entails, we do not know. Still, we could only guess that dis­cus­sions had begun around writ­ing a new con­sti­tu­tion or amend­ing the present one to give Jamaicans full agency over their own des­tiny, free and clear of for­mer colo­nial slavemasters.
I mean, this seems like a no-brain­er, right? Not so in Jamaica because sit­ting down in good faith and tak­ing a seri­ous look at what is out­dat­ed isn’t work­ing; it is too much to ask of the mem­bers of the two polit­i­cal par­ties that take turns gov­ern­ing the Island.
Trinidad and Tobago did it, Barbados did it, and though Jamaicans love to brag and chat a lot, Jamaicans can­not write a con­sti­tu­tion by the peo­ple for the peo­ple and of the peo­ple. Where is the lead­er­ship in the region that Jamaicans loved to talk about so much?
Other than mur­der­ing each oth­er as the largest English ‑speak­ing Island in the region, what are we lead­ing on? Even if Jamaica did every­thing right and became a repub­lic that gov­erns itself free from out­side dic­tates today, we would only be a fol­low­er behind Trinidad and Tobago and tiny Barbados. That ought to silence some unbri­dled mis­guid­ed brava­do, but it won’t.

We are now learn­ing that noth­ing sub­stan­tive has been done a full year after talks were sup­posed to com­mence between the two polit­i­cal par­ties. The Government blames the oppo­si­tion for fail­ing to nom­i­nate two of its mem­bers to sit on the Constitutional Reform Committee. * (high­ly irre­spon­si­ble behav­ior by the oppo­si­tion).
On the oth­er hand, the oppo­si­tion argues that the exec­u­tive and judi­cial branch­es of Government should be decol­o­nized togeth­er and expressed con­cerns on oth­er mat­ters, such as the review and pos­si­ble amend­ment of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedom.* (Great point by the oppo­si­tion, on the issue of com­plete decol­o­niza­tion. However, the oppo­si­tion can­not con­tin­ue to stand in the way of progress in our coun­try by con­stant­ly talk­ing about the rights and priv­i­leges we should afford the worst ele­ments amongst us)
Jamaica needs con­sti­tu­tion­al reform and a new path to self-gov­er­nance. One that is free from for­eign pow­ers’ dic­tates. The oppo­si­tion can­not demand, on the one hand, full de-annex­a­tion from Britain while show­ing that it is still up to its old ways of empow­er­ing crim­i­nals, couched in lan­guage of fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms on the other.
Nevertheless, the oppo­si­tion is cor­rect in its asser­tion that quote;“On the main issue on the table, in terms of con­sti­tu­tion­al reform, which is for Jamaica to move from being ruled with a head of state, if not gov­erned by a monarch based in the UK (United Kingdom), to hav­ing a Jamaican head of state – a pres­i­dent – that as part of that process, we don’t do it in a piece­meal way, but we com­plete our decol­o­niza­tion, achieve full sov­er­eign­ty and polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence by mov­ing away from the [King’s] Privy Council as our final court and acced­ing to the juris­dic­tion of the Caribbean Court of Justice as our final court.”

The gov­ern­men­t’s posi­tion is unten­able. Quote: “We con­sid­er it unfor­tu­nate that the par­lia­men­tary Opposition is twin­ning acces­sion to the appel­late juris­dic­tion of the CCJ (Caribbean Court of Justice) to the move to abol­ish the con­sti­tu­tion­al monar­chy and estab­lish the repub­lic of Jamaica.”
In oth­er words, the gov­ern­ing par­ty wants to decou­ple Jamaica from Britain while main­tain­ing the UK Privy Council as the final court of appeals for Jamaicans.
How does that work? It makes ratio­nal sense that Jamaica move like oth­er small­er nations have already done to a con­sti­tu­tion­al repub­lic in a ful­some way.
As a strong sup­port­er of con­sti­tu­tion­al reform, I under­stand that the Government may have con­cerns about the effi­ca­cy and char­ac­ter of the Caribbean Court of Justice as a final court of appeals.
Politics and ego have so tar­nished our own Jamaican judi­cia­ry that it makes per­fect sense that the gov­ern­ment, what­ev­er its imme­di­ate con­cerns are with a Caribbean court of jus­tice, have those concerns.
As I have repeat­ed­ly stat­ed, cor­rup­tion in the judi­cia­ry is not just about mon­ey chang­ing hands. It’s about improp­er­ly includ­ing polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy in the inter­pre­ta­tion of the laws.
The gov­ern­ment has every right to be con­cerned about that, assum­ing it is a part of its con­cerns. The open left­ist ide­ol­o­gy spout­ed from the insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing in the Caribbean from which most judges come should be a grave con­cern for all Jamaicans. The same insti­tu­tions pro­vide the bulk of those jurists across the region.
With that said, much can be done to ensure that Judges adhere to prin­ci­ples through strict codes of ethics and conduct.
There are some judges in Jamaica who con­tin­ue to oper­ate like demigods, even though they are unelect­ed bureau­crats. This is true from the most senior judge down to the last mag­is­trate on the totem pole.
Jamaica can ful­ly de-annex from Britain while show­ing lead­er­ship in how judges are allowed to oper­ate, not as unac­count­able demigods but as answer­able pub­lic servants.
Judges who do not like to obey rules are free to go prac­tice law at the pri­vate bar.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.