MEXICO CITY (Dispatches) -- Antigua and Barbuda plans to hold a referendum on becoming a republic within the next three years, the Caribbean nation’s prime minister told British media, a move that could see King Charles III removed as its head of state.
“This is a matter that has to be taken to a referendum...within the next, probably, three years,” Prime Minister Gaston Browne told ITV News shortly after a local ceremony confirmed Charles III as the country’s King following Queen Elizabeth II’s death.
The tiny Caribbean island nation, which became independent from Britain in 1981, is one of 14 Commonwealth members who share the UK monarch as their head of state.
Brown said becoming a republic was “a final step to complete the circle of independence to ensure we are truly a sovereign nation,” but stressed a referendum was “not an act of hostility” and would not involve retiring Commonwealth membership.
The nation has a population of less than 100,000, according to official data.
Browne’s pledge comes amid a growing republican push across the Caribbean region, with Barbados voting to remove the UK monarchy last year, and the ruling party in Jamaica having signaled it may follow.
Anti-monarchist sentiment has grown in tandem with racial justice movements in former British colonies, bringing anti-colonialist thinking and conversations on Indigenous rights into the mainstream.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge faced a raft of protests on a trip through the Caribbean in March, with groups demanding an apology and reparations for slavery. William and Kate cancelled a visit to a cacao farm, the first stop on their tour of Belize, because of protests.
Ahead of their visit to Jamaica, an open letter released by the Advocates Network, and signed by more than 100 local leaders, said: “During her 70 years on the throne, your grandmother has done nothing to redress and atone for the suffering of our ancestors that took place during her reign and/or during the entire period of British trafficking of Africans, enslavement, indentureship and colonization.”
Cindy McCreery, a senior lecturer in history at the University of Sydney who specializes in monarchy and colonialism, agrees that republican sentiment will be given impetus.
“I do think that now that the Queen has passed on, that does give republicans in Australia and elsewhere more room to speak openly about the constitutional future and to kind of prepare the path for a republic,” McCreery says.
According to McCreery, “Particularly countries in the Caribbean, which of course have that very painful legacy of British slavery in the past, I think they are more likely to be among the states that choose to become republics.”
In June, Jamaica’s Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Marlene Malahoo Forte, said that the process of transitioning to a republic had “formally commenced.”
Barbados, once called “Little England” for its tight British ties, became a republic in late 2021.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in 2021 that she thinks the country will become a republic in her lifetime.