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THE EDITOR, Sir:
I WAS pleased to read in The Gleaner of Tuesday, June 28 that "Prime Minister Bruce Golding has also proposed that Jamaica say bye-bye to the Queen (Elizabeth II) as head of state before Independence Day next year". I hope the prime minister will follow through.
The prime minister should ignore the results of the recent poll taken by pollster Bill Johnson which showed that 60 per cent of Jamaicans believe their lives would have been better under British rule.
Apparently, most Jamaicans have not read the Jamaican Constitution. They do not know that the elected Jamaican Government cannot sign a bill into law which has been passed in Parliament; it has to be signed by the appointed representative of the Queen - the governor general. The prime minister cannot appoint a person to a high government position without the approval of the Queen. Many Jamaicans are young and have not experienced the dehumanising and humiliating effects of British colonialism.
It is not the first time that a Jamaican prime minister has expressed the desire to remove the Queen as head of state. As early as 1978, the late Prime Minister Michael Manley, in his address on the occasion of a special plenary meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, bemoaned that: "... We are the products of a slave system which was the foundation for a unique colonial experience. We have known genocide, racism, oppression and exploitation as first colonialism, and latterly neocolonialism, has dominated our lives ... ."
Notwithstanding all this rhetoric, the Queen is still the head of state with executive authority over the elected democratic Government of Jamaica and its people.
I am a strong advocate for a free, independent and democratic Jamaica that will command respect in the community of free and independent nations. On May 11, I sent an open letter to the prime minister requesting that Parliament act as one body and take immediate steps to amend the Constitution to abolish the executive authority of the Queen. The Jamaican taxpayers will no longer have to pay the salaries and expenses of the Queen's appointed representative and his staff for doing what elected Jamaicans are more capable of performing.
I am hoping that sometime early in 2012, which will mark 50 years of neocolonial rule and 147 years since the British massacred our fellow Jamaicans who rebelled against British rule in the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865, Jamaicans will witness the prime minister holding hands with the leader of the Opposition and say with a united voice, "Jamaica, land we love, free at last, free at last!"
DONALD G. MORGAN
President, Jamaica Volunteers
Association, Inc
.
I WAS pleased to read in The Gleaner of Tuesday, June 28 that "Prime Minister Bruce Golding has also proposed that Jamaica say bye-bye to the Queen (Elizabeth II) as head of state before Independence Day next year". I hope the prime minister will follow through.
The prime minister should ignore the results of the recent poll taken by pollster Bill Johnson which showed that 60 per cent of Jamaicans believe their lives would have been better under British rule.
Apparently, most Jamaicans have not read the Jamaican Constitution. They do not know that the elected Jamaican Government cannot sign a bill into law which has been passed in Parliament; it has to be signed by the appointed representative of the Queen - the governor general. The prime minister cannot appoint a person to a high government position without the approval of the Queen. Many Jamaicans are young and have not experienced the dehumanising and humiliating effects of British colonialism.
It is not the first time that a Jamaican prime minister has expressed the desire to remove the Queen as head of state. As early as 1978, the late Prime Minister Michael Manley, in his address on the occasion of a special plenary meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, bemoaned that: "... We are the products of a slave system which was the foundation for a unique colonial experience. We have known genocide, racism, oppression and exploitation as first colonialism, and latterly neocolonialism, has dominated our lives ... ."
Notwithstanding all this rhetoric, the Queen is still the head of state with executive authority over the elected democratic Government of Jamaica and its people.
I am a strong advocate for a free, independent and democratic Jamaica that will command respect in the community of free and independent nations. On May 11, I sent an open letter to the prime minister requesting that Parliament act as one body and take immediate steps to amend the Constitution to abolish the executive authority of the Queen. The Jamaican taxpayers will no longer have to pay the salaries and expenses of the Queen's appointed representative and his staff for doing what elected Jamaicans are more capable of performing.
I am hoping that sometime early in 2012, which will mark 50 years of neocolonial rule and 147 years since the British massacred our fellow Jamaicans who rebelled against British rule in the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865, Jamaicans will witness the prime minister holding hands with the leader of the Opposition and say with a united voice, "Jamaica, land we love, free at last, free at last!"
DONALD G. MORGAN
President, Jamaica Volunteers
Association, Inc
.
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