JAMAICAN OPPOSITION leader Mark Golding has led renewed calls for the removal of the Queen as it head of state.

It comes after Barbadians celebrated the electoral win of Dame Sandra Mason earlier this month with the 72-year-old will expected to become the first president of Barbados in replacement of longest-reigning monarch as it head of state on November 30th.

The pressure has mounted on the Caribbean nation to follow suit in the turn towards republicanism after years of inaction by previous governments and as Prime Minister Andrew Holness arrives in Glasgow ahead of the COP26 conference.

Mr Golding, the leader of the People’s National Party, has now urged for steps to be made along with their “sister island”.

“We in Jamaica should follow now, right away and without delay. The establishment of a non-executive president as our head of state in replacement of its English monarch was agreed by major political parties over a decade ago,” he said.

“We can work together to make the required constitutional steps to make this happen. Let us move forward with this now.”

Barbados’ successful bipartisan efforts were tipped to create a “domino-effect” among other Caribbean countries left in the “Commonwealth Realms” where the Queen remains it head of state, including Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Talks of the CARICOM countries severing their colonial ties with Britain became heightened in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the global resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement last year.

However, only Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines have considered formally ditching the Queen as their head of state.

In 2009, St. Vincentian voters defeated a proposal for the nation to officially become a republic.

Mr Golding went on to praised Barbados’ effort to “repatriate their sovereignty” ahead of marking their 50th year of independence from Britain and called on the Jamaican government to commemorate their 60 years of independence as a new republic.

The renewed calls have been welcomed but with scepticism from many Jamaicans after Mr Holness made removing the Queen as head of state a priority in his 2016 manifesto, but has yet to call a long-awaited referendum.

Delays by successive governments have often been blamed on complex, high constitutional thresholds. 

Speaking to The Independent, Mr Golding said: “I don’t think that one could argue that we are fully independent when our head of state is somebody who lives on the other side of the Atlantic ocean and isn’t a Jamaican…this is something that we have been committed to for a long time and we continue to be committed to it.”