Who to trust at the top of the pile?
Now that the Queen has died, I have a proposal for a new head of state for this country. The Queen and I met only once. She came to the west coast of Canada when I was teaching there in the 1980s. The school got the afternoon off, so I went down to the waterfront to greet her, but I found myself at the back of a crowd. As she came ashore, I caught a glimpse of her hat. It was purple. I waved to it and cheered it. It is possible that the Queen may not have noticed.
Nevertheless, I feel I knew the Queen because she was almost indistinguishable from my mother. They were born within three years of each other and died within two. Their hairstyles kept pace for 90 years. Their hemlines also. Both married soon after the war, and both had a son, followed by a daughter, followed by two more sons. (Thank you for asking, I am Edward.) Disregarding the odd palace, the Queen and my mother could have swapped photo albums.
Both women, then, were prisoners of their time and their biology. Nothing odd there. Most of us are. But the Queen was also imprisoned by her role, and that role was one of paradox. She was limitlessly wealthy, but she never shopped. She ruled over kingdoms, but went nowhere freely. She was top of the pile, but her job was to serve. She was just an ordinary woman, but it was her lifelong burden to embody the myth of royalty, the big juju.
The moment she died, that juju passed to her son. We have seen him already greeting a line of subjects. They seemed moved. Some cried. One looked like fainting. One kissed his hand. It could have been the 14th century, or a faith healing session. Here was the atavistic belief in royal power. Surely it is time for New Zealand to ditch all this.
Mentally, this country is already a republic. When royals visit, it is as characters from a soap opera, not as potentates or juju-mongers. No-one holds up a sick child for them to touch. So it would seem fitting now to sever the tie.
But there’s a difficulty. Consider Africa. It is thick with republics, and I would struggle to name an incorrupt one. The problem, as always, is power. To whom do you entrust it?
The wise old birds who knocked up the US Constitution took care to divide power among three branches of government, in the hope that each would counterbalance the others. Two hundred and forty years later, they found themselves with Trump as president, a tainted Supreme Court, and a Republican Party so thoroughly corrupt that a fascist coup came close to succeeding.
A hundred years ago, the Russians killed their hereditary king, and have been saddled with a series of nonhereditary ones since. Most have been worse than any tsar. The current one is a Grade A bastard.
If we ditched the monarchy, we could vest its power in an elected politician. But would you be comfortable with, say, a President Muldoon?
The alternative is to give power to someone apolitical. The obvious choice would be the All Blacks captain. All Blacks are already local royalty. But they do tend to be blokes, and blokes have a worse record with power than women. Also, they get knocks to the head. Perhaps a cricketer, then, would be more suited to the role.
In the light of which, and in the event of our becoming a republic, I propose that our head of state be the captain of the White Ferns.
Or we could keep Charles.