Jamaica’s legal and constitutional minister Marlene Malahoo Forte told Sky News yesterday that the Jamaican government will introduce a bill next month to sever the country’s ties with the British monarchy, possibly removing King Charles as the head of state by 2024, and becoming a republic.
“While the United Kingdom is celebrating the coronation of the King, that is for the United Kingdom,” Malahoo Forte told Sky. “Jamaica is looking to write a new constitution ... which will sever ties with the monarch as our head of state. My government is saying we have to do it now,” she continued, adding that for Jamaicans, it’s “time to say goodbye” to the British Crown.
A recent poll has found that majorities in almost half the 15 British Commonwealth realms—including Jamaica—would vote to become republics if given the opportunity.
Malahoo Forte told Sky that Jamaicans “do not identify with King Charles. He is as foreign as it gets to us. Plain and simple.” She recalled that Britain also transported around 600,000 African slaves to Jamaica, and British landowners profiteered from plantations on the island. Republicanism, Malahoo Forte said, “is about us saying goodbye to a form of government that is linked to a painful past of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade…. Nothing short of a full apology, plus concrete steps to repair the wrong, will suffice,” she said, adding that reparations “are what the people of Jamaica want, and it is something that the government will do.”
