The ascension of King Charles to the British throne has stirred renewed calls from politicians for former colonies in the Caribbean to remove the monarch as their head of state.
Charles succeeds his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, who died on Thursday.
The prime minister of Jamaica said the country would mourn Elizabeth, and his counterpart in Antigua and Barbuda ordered flags to half-mast until the day of her burial.
Photo: AFP
However, in some quarters there are doubts about the role a distant monarch should play in the 21st century.
Earlier this year, some Commonwealth leaders expressed unease at a summit in Rwanda about the passage of leadership of the 54-nation club from Elizabeth to Charles. An eight-day tour in March by now heir-to-the-throne Prince William and his wife, Kate, to Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas was marked by calls for reparation payments and an apology for slavery.
Barbados, one of a dozen Caribbean Commonwealth members, ditched the queen as head of state last year. Jamaica has signaled it might soon follow suit, although both remain members of the Commonwealth.
A survey last month showed that 56 percent of Jamaicans favor removing the British monarch as the head of state.
Jamaica lawmaker Mikael Phillips in 2020 filed a motion backing the removal.
“I am hoping as the prime minister had said in one of his expressions, that he would move faster when there is a new monarch in place,” Phillips said on Thursday.
Former Saint Lucian prime minister Allen Chastanet said he backed what he said was a “general” movement toward republicanism in his country.
“I certainly at this point would support becoming a republic,” the opposition leader said.
Rights advocates in the region said Charles’ ascension to the throne was also an opportunity to redouble calls for slavery reparations.
More than 10 million Africans were shackled into the Atlantic slave trade by European nations between the 15th and 19th centuries. Those who survived the brutal voyage were forced to labor on plantations in the Caribbean and the Americas.
Although Charles did not mention reparations in his speech at the conference in Rwanda, he expressed sorrow at the suffering caused by slavery.
“It is the end of an era of the monarchy maintaining the status quo of the legacies of colonialism,” said Rosalea Hamilton, coordinator of Jamaica’s Advocates Network, which protested the royal visit.
“Whoever will take over the position should be asked to allow the royal family to pay African people reparations,” Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration general secretary David Denny said. “We should all work towards removing the royal family as head of state of our nations.”
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