Antigua and Barbuda has dropped its oath of allegiance to King Charles just days after the monarch’s latest overseas trip to the nation was announced.
Newly appointed officials in the Caribbean state no longer swear loyalty to King Charles III and his successors.
Instead, they pledge their commitment to the state of Antigua and Barbuda itself, along with its legal framework and constitution.
The legislative change was enacted in May, following the re-election of Gaston Browne as Prime Minister on April 30.
Sir Steadroy Benjamin, the country’s attorney general, declared at the time of the law’s passage that the reform was long overdue.
“We will once and for all finally not be swearing to His Majesty in England, his heirs and successors in England,” he said.
The nation gained independence from Britain in 1981.
Mr Browne has long harboured ambitions to transform Antigua and Barbuda into a republic, a move he regards as the natural next step for a sovereign nation.
A government official in the archipelago, speaking anonymously from the capital St John’s, offered a pointed assessment of the current arrangement.
Antigua and Barbuda has dropped its oath of allegiance to the King merely days after the monarch’s latest overseas trip to the nation was announced
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GETTY“You cannot be independent nor call yourself independent if you have a head of state so far away in a foreign land. He lives in a palace in London. We don’t even have a palace here on our island. How can that be right?” he told The Telegraph.
The country is reportedly planning to establish its own head of state, though the matter has not yet been put before voters.
It comes after Buckingham Palace announced King Charles’s autumn Caribbean tour, scheduled from October 27 to November 4.
The King and Queen will visit Antigua and Barbuda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, as well as travelling to the Bahamas and Guyana.
King Charles welcoming Antigua and Barbudan President Gaston Browne at Buckingham Palace in 2022
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GETTY
It will be his first visit to the eastern Caribbean nation since the oath was scrapped.
Beyond the allegiance question, the monarch faces ongoing debates over slave-trade reparations and wider “de-realming” discussions, whereby Caribbean nations could remove the sovereign as head of state whilst remaining Commonwealth members.
Grenada took a comparable step last year, formally dropping its oath to the King on August 1 – Emancipation Day, marking the abolition of slavery across the British Empire.
In 2021, then Prince of Wales, the King delivered a speech of enduring friendship as Barbados became a republic, formally acknowledging “the appalling atrocity of slavery.”
The Bahamas, another stop on the King’s itinerary, presents a markedly different picture.
A foreign office spokesman stated plainly: “There are no immediate plans to do so. The Bahamas is happy to remain a part of the British realm and Commonwealth.”
The King, much like the late Queen Elizabeth II, is understood to hold the view that such constitutional matters are for each realm and its people to determine freely.
His previous Caribbean visits include Antigua and Barbuda in November 2017 in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, Guyana in February 2000, and the Bahamas in July 1973.
Buckingham Palace has said the eight-day tour will “celebrate communities, cultures and nature within the Commonwealth family.”