MONARCH’S ROLE

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30264, 17 October 1963, Page 13

MONARCH’S ROLE

Discussion

By Kenyan

(Special Cnpdt. N.Z.P.A.) LONDON. October 15.

Should the British Sovereign always remain the head of the Commonwealth or should the head of state of each Commonwealth nation hold the title fa turn for a fixed period? This question is posed by Mr Tom Mboya, Kenya's Minister of Justice, and one of Africa’s budding statesmen.

In a book just published. “Freedom and After," Mr Mboya says that republics will probably outnumber monarchies in the Commonwealth within the next year or t&o. In this context Mr Mboya examines the role of the Queen of its parent country.

He thinks it is not a sensible idea that she should move her residence among Commonwealth countries. “The Queen, after all. means much more to the British people than she means to members of the Commonwealth fa distant countries. The day may, indeed, eventually come when the position of the head of the Commonwealth may itself rotate rather than that the Queen be asked to move bouse all the time,” he says. “With more and more republican countries comprising the Commonwealth there ■may be a move towards making the Queen simply one of several who hold the position in rotation. Does that thought shock royalists?" The “Daily Mail” comments: "We shall see. Alfter all, here is an imaginative and exuberant young African looking at the new Commonwealth, not an Anglo-Saxon lamenting the decline and fall of the British,”