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Gov't Urged To FastTrack Constitutional Review, Reparations Committee

Gov't Urged To FastTrack Constitutional Review, Reparations Committee

Government consultant, Claude Skelton Cline has called on the Hon. Andrew Fahie-led administration to accelerate its Constitutional Review process as well as the forming of its Reparations Committee.
On June 10, this year Cabinet agreed for the British Virgin Islands to commence its Constitutional Review process, and plans are underway to have a Constitutional Review Commission established for the task.

As for reparations, Premier Fahie wants the United Kingdom to compensate the descendants of the enslaved, and he publicly backed the Caribbean Community’s Reparations Commission in its quest to seek reparations.

Speaking during his Tuesday 17th November 2020 radio show, Skelton Cline said: “I want to call on the government to hasten their own steps in the formation of this constitutional review. To hasten their steps of what the Premier said he would do some weeks ago about forming a Reparations Committee that can be joined with our Caribbean brothers and sisters that we can together be a force in representing our position to the so-called powers that be – France, the United Kingdom, all of them.”

He added, “Because it is together we are stronger. Unified we can put forward a more effective case on these matters! We must hasten the steps!”

Skelton Cline’s statement comes following a statement from Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley during the historic move of the removal of British Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson from that country’s National Heroes Square on Monday 16 November 2020.

Lord Nelson, in his day, defended the slave trade yet a bronze statue in his honour was erected in 1813. The statute’s new home will be the national museum.

Barbados is pushing to remove the Queen as its head of state and become a republic in 2021.

Prime Minister Mottley said: “This government has been very clear that national consciousness and identity come at the core of the nation’s state and if we do not know who we are and if we are not clear what we will fight for then we are doomed to be exploited and to be colonized again. The Caribbean Community have started the difficult conversation internationally, too on the issue of reparations.”
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