INDEPENDENT SENATOR Douglas Orane said it simply: changing the Oaths of Allegiance makes common sense and "represents what the Jamaican nation is all about."
So why all the fuss and heated debate between Government and Opposition legislators? And the latter did tell the Senate last Friday that they were not really opposed to the new oaths.
After 40 years of Independence it seems to us that no patriotic Jamaican would wish to continue swearing allegiance to the British monarch rather than to Jamaica and its Constitution.
To argue that it is inconsistent to stop swearing to the Queen while still retaining her as Head of State is a technicality that merely reflects the slow pace of constitutional reform which was started as long ago as 1991.
Indeed it was not until May 1995 that a Joint Select Committee of the Parliament tabled a Final Report on Constitutional and Electoral Reform. That report recommended republican status for Jamaica which would no longer recognise the Queen as Jamaica's Head of State.
Constitutional changes such as changing the Oaths of Allegiance require only simple parliamentary majorities. Other amendments are more complicated; and in fact the position of the Queen as Head of State is one of the deeply entrenched provisions which have to be submitted to the electorate in a referendum.
In this election season almost every topic tends to become contentious; and the JLP members may reasonably argue that belated passage of the measure through Parliament is untidy. They will have little sympathy for Mr. Patterson apparently forgetting his early promise that no other Prime Minister would have to swear allegiance to the British monarch, her heirs and successors.
But he remembered in time. The big question is: who will win the privilege of swearing the new oath?
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
