By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

NATIONAL Security Minister Wayne Munroe said there are more substantive issues to address in The Bahamas than “ceremonial” matters like changing the Head of State.

After King Charles III was crowned last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell said it is time for a Bahamian Head of State, one selected by residents or the government.

Asked at the House of Assembly yesterday about this, Mr Munroe said: “It's something I've given absolutely no thought to because it's so marginal. Currently, the Governor General, who is the King’s representative in this country, has no ability to make decisions of his own will other than in limited circumstances, which basically relate to if you have a circumstance there's a question over who commands the majority in the House of Assembly. The Head of State is only ceremonial. We have much more things of substance to do that I think that we could address before we have the luxury of time to deal with ceremonial things.”

Earlier this week, Mr Mitchell said: “The state of affairs and the need for change 50 years later is like Michael Manley used to say, impatient of debate, but even in so-called ‘radical Jamaica’, you will hear it said, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ or there are some more important things to do than constitutional change. But, the stark reality is this — as benign as things look, as the monarchy appears, as unobtrusive and inexpensive as it appears, there has to be something wrong and rotten in the state of Denmark when a European leader is the embodiment of the state of dispersed Africans on the far-flung islands in the Caribbean.”

“Some day, some generation will have to fix this. Until then, I guess we’ll soldier along as we have with the obvious staring in our faces, but we’ll pretend like Bob Dylan said in his song that we just don’t see.”