Jamaica plans to hold a referendum on independence from the British monarchy and the election of its president as early as 2024, and is also going to demand an apology and reparations from the UK for the years of the slave trade in the past, said the minister for legal and constitutional affairs, Marlene Malahoo Forte.
According to the Constitution of Jamaica, executive power in the country is administered on behalf of the British monarch by the governor-general. The candidacy of the governor-general is presented to the monarch by the prime minister of Jamaica.
"Jamaica is looking to write a new constitution... which will sever ties with the monarch [of Great Britain] as our head of state," Forte said in an interview with Sky News. She added that "[reparations] are what the people of Jamaica want, and it is something that the government will do."
The minister noted that she is going to hold consultations with the public about the referendum and bring in a bill to parliament in May after the coronation of King Charles III. The adoption of the bill may take up to nine months, after which the people will have to adopt it in a referendum.
The minister clarified that Jamaica has "complex" relationship with the UK, in addition, the memory of the colonial era and the slave trade played a decisive role in the emergence of the referendum initiative. "Republicanism is about us saying goodbye to a form of government that is linked to a painful past of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade," said Marlene Malahoo Forte.
Sky News adds that in 2022, during the Prince and Princess of Wales's controversial tour to the Caribbean, Prince William acknowledged the existence of the slave trade problem in the past, but stopped short of an apology.
Jamaica is a member of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth of Nations is an association of 53 independent states, which includes the United Kingdom and almost all of its former dominions, colonies, and protectorates, as well as Mozambique and Rwanda. The total population of the Commonwealth countries is more than two billion people. The head of the Commonwealth is the British monarch.