Meghan and Harry’s interview fuels debate over abolishing the monarchy in former British colonies

WASHINGTON.- Commonwealth Day was celebrated on Monday, and from Antigua to Zambia, the former British colonies that make up this Commonwealth of Nations they celebrated the occasion with traditional parades, display of flags and speeches praising the royal family of Great Britain.

But this year’s festivities were overshadowed by the explosive Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Dukes of Sussex couple Harry and Meghan, which sparked new accusations of racism against members of the royal family and recalled the monarchy’s difficult colonial history.

What is certain is that the deschave of the duke and duchess fueled an old debate on the abolition of the monarchy in some of the 54 nations of the Commonwealth. Over the past year, in the heat of protests against racism and repression across the world, demands have been redoubled to permanently erase any vestige of the colonial past. And now politicians in these countries are forced to answer an increasingly passionate question from their constituents: What is the point of continuing to preserve Queen Elizabeth as a ceremonial image?

The strongest calls to sever ties with the monarchy in recent days have come from Australia. Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Monday, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the interview showed the official head of state “must be an Australian citizen, one of us, not the Queen. or the king of the United Kingdom ”. Turnbull also noted that many Australians are fans of Queen Elizabeth II, but not necessarily of the monarchy in general, and no one is sure whether they will sympathize with whoever succeeds her as well.

Members of the Australian Labor Party are hoping the explosive interview – “nuclear,” according to British tabloids – will reignite the historic debate over Australia’s transformation into a republic.. The 1999 referendum on the impeachment of the Queen as head of state failed, but in a video released Tuesday, lawmaker Matt Thistlethwaite said “it was time” to discuss the issue again.

Julian Hill, a Labor MP, said on Twitter that the melodrama of the British royal family “is irrelevant to modern Australia”..

“His latest escapades with the pathetic privileged remind us that there must be an Australian at the head of state,” Hill said.

Already before the interview aired, some factions in the former British Caribbean colonies were increasingly uncomfortable continuing to drag ties with a country that had amassed its wealth through the slave trade. In September, Barbados announced that Queen Elizabeth II would cease to be its head of state. “It’s time to put our colonial past behind us for good,” Island Governor General Sandra Mason said. Jamaican leaders have already said they intend to do the same, as some have done in Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines..

During Friday night’s interview with Oprah, Meghan suggested her Métis heritage may have renewed her appreciation for the Royal Family in the Commonwealth, where “60-70%” of the population is of color. He also commented that on his travels with Harry he is approached by many emotional girls and women “to see someone like them in this position for the first time.”

“I never understood how they didn’t appreciate it as an added benefit and as a reflection of today’s world,” Meghan said of her in-laws.

Instead, the couple revealed that a member of the royal family asked them how dark the baby’s skin would be, sparking fury on social media. “She is much lighter in skin than we are,” Jamaican host Dionne Jackson Miller tweeted, wondering if this comment would “be a turning point” for the movement to make Jamaica an independent republic.

The situation in Canada

The propensity to cut the monarchy is also gaining ground in Canada, where a February poll found a record of support for the Queen to stop being head of state.. Almost half of Canadians polled support the idea, and experts say Oprah’s interview will eventually tip the scales in that direction.

However, achieving this goal in Canada will not be easy, as all 11 provincial legislatures, as well as the House of Commons and the Senate, are expected to support this initiative. Canada’s past attempts to change its Constitution led to Quebec’s secessionist referendum, “and the country was on the verge of a split,” says Emmett Macfarlane, associate professor of political science at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

“I understand that some want to enter into constitutional debates,” he said on Tuesday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “For now, I’m not going to go into that: I’m totally focused on getting us out of the pandemic.”

A symbolic break with the New Zealand monarchy does not seem too feasible either.

“I have already said that I do not see a huge desire among New Zealanders to change our constitutional arrangements, and I do not expect that to change in the immediate future,” the Prime Minister said on Monday. Jacinda Ardern.

The Washington Post

Translation of Jaime Arrambide

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