Originally published in NOW Grenada, The Grenadian Voice and The New Today on 26. June 2025.
The government’s recent announcement that it intends to table a bill before Parliament to alter the Oath of Allegiance in Grenada to unilaterally remove references to our head of state, King Charles III, is outrageous.
The government’s intent to force through such a change unilaterally, without popular consultation or a referendum, is scandalous and shameful. Changing the Oath of Allegiance was overwhelmingly rejected by the Grenadian people at the 2016 constitutional referendum. The government now attempting to ram through such a change without asking the populace, whom they know would reject it, is an immense affront to the Grenadian people and the very foundational principles of our democracy.
The Oath of Allegiance is a sacred pledge — a pledge before God — to remain loyal and true to the King, who is the living embodiment of the Grenadian state, its constitution and institutions. So long as Grenada remains a monarchy within the Commonwealth, with the King as our head of state, that is the position he will hold. The Oath of Allegiance should reflect this. For the Prime Minister to callously tamper with this sacred oath without the people’s consent, indeed with the only indication ever given being that the people wholeheartedly reject such a change, is grossly offensive and insulting to the entire nation.
This is an oath all of Grenada’s constitutional Prime Ministers and elected representatives since independence — including the current Prime Minister — have taken. It represents our elected representatives’ loyalty to the nation and its institutions, and to the King who stands as the ultimate guardian of them. Changing it is a slippery slope to allowing politicians leeway to interpret what their oath means. An oath of allegiance to the King is implicitly an oath to the Constitution, to Grenada’s institutions and to our independence and democracy.
An oath to simply an abstract concept of “Grenada” as the proposed change would make it, does not make our politicians beholden to these principles. With such a wording, politicians become free to engage in whatever behaviour they may please, so long as they can construe it as being in the best interest of the abstract concept of “Grenada”. It would imply no loyalty to our Constitutional order, our democracy or to our institutions, simply a loyalty to whatever our politicians personally interpret as the best for “Grenada”. This, of course, may indeed not be what is in the people’s best interests.
The government amending the Constitution without the people’s consent sets an extraordinarily dangerous precedent. Grenada’s constitution, as it currently stands, is unchanged since independence in 1974. Since the restoration of democracy in 1984, it has provided us with over 40 years of peaceful and democratic governance. No government has, in this time, attempted to change it without seeking the people’s approval — until today.
Opening the Pandora’s box of governments unilaterally changing the Constitution is incredibly dangerous. While many fundamental parts of the constitution are thankfully protected by mandatory requirements for a referendum, significant portions of it are not. Breaking the long-held convention that governments do not unilaterally change even those parts of the constitution they theoretically have the legal power to, sets an incredibly worrying precedent. Future governments may become far more emboldened to impose sweeping, significant constitutional changes upon Grenada contrary to the people’s wishes.
Governments unilaterally changing the Constitution is unheard of in Grenada. This marks a dangerous departure from a valuable convention which has helped protect and guard Grenadian democracy. It must not come to pass.
We encourage everyone to write to the Prime Minister and their MP to make their opposition to this dangerous and insulting change known. The Grenada Monarchist League calls on the government to scrap this bill in its entirety or, at the very least, call a referendum to see whether or not the Grenadian people approve of this change.
We invite all Grenadians who value our constitutional democracy to join us in our fight against this dangerous change at www.grenadamonarchist.org.
Grenada Monarchist League 