It is a question waiting for a serious answer from the administration of Prime Minister Owen Arthur that had established the high-level Constitution Review Commission under the chairmanship of Sir Henry.

The issue of Barbados moving away from the current monarchical system to that of a constitutional parliamentary republic is linked to the wide-ranging recommendations of the ten-member commission.

In fairness to the distinguished members of that commission and all those Barbadians, of various walks of life, who took time to turn up at public meetings of the commission and those who offered written submissions, the question raised by Sir Henry deserves to be answered.

Since the submission of the commission's 136-page report, including appendices with dissenting views, among whom were former Attorney-General Maurice King and the late Wendell McClean, there have been some strident calls, from various segments of society, for the move towards republican status.

The need to change the oath of allegiance when, for instance, cabinet ministers and judges are being appointed, or even important commissions of inquiry, only underscore the need for a proactive agenda on constitutional reform with a change to republican status at the core of such a development.

Jamaica, for one, has not bothered to wait for the change to republican status with a non-executive president, as being envisaged, in order to terminate the practice of lawmakers having to swear allegiance to a monarch in England.

Departing from the existing constitutional status is neither an emotional anti-Queen posture nor a radical manifestation. It is simply a development whose time has not only come, but is long overdue.

Indeed, the thrust towards creation of a Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as the region's final appellate court - an institution encouragingly being advanced with much enthusiasm by Barbados - is quite in keeping with the sentiment for a change in the constitutional status quo to that of a republic,