Barbados says goodbye to the queen: elected a president

Within a few weeks Elizabeth II she will no longer be the queen of Barbados. The small Caribbean nation had already decided last year, with a referendum, of abolish the monarchy and become a republic. Now the constitutional change is about to become a reality. In recent days, the inhabitants of the island (less than 300 thousand) they elected a president for the first time, choosing a woman: Sandra Mason, 72, who had already been the first woman to serve on the island’s Court of Appeals and held the post of Governor General since 2018. Manson will be sworn in on November 30th, on the day of the 55th anniversary of Barbados’ independence from the United Kingdom. From that moment The Queen will no longer have any role on Rihanna’s island. “It’s time to leave the colonial past behind“, Said the prime minister of the small Caribbean nation last year, Mia Mottley, announcing that from November 2021 the country would become a republic.

Barbados, an English colony until 1966, is part of the Commonwealth, that is, those countries that had been part of the British Empire and that – although independent today – have maintained more or less formal ties with the English crown.

Queen Elizabeth, although not involved in the day-to-day affairs of the Barbadian government, still had an institutional role. And he could among other things appoint the governor general, that is, the person in charge of representing the British crown in Barbados. The role was also assumed in the past by the Duke of Windsor, that is, thatEdward VIII that he abdicated the throne for the sake of Wallis Simpson.

In a matter of weeks, however, Her Majesty will lose one of her Caribbean jewels. And it won’t be the first: Guyana had already become a Republic in 1970, followed by Trinidad and Tobago in 1976 and Dominica in 1978. The farewell to the British crown was publicly discussed in Barbados since 1998. For the 95-year-old queen having a president blow her “seat”, therefore, should not be a shock. All the more so as he continues to remain head of state for half a dozen former British colonies. But now the question arises whether other countries will also follow the Barbados route: starting with Jamaica. Even the republican movements speak insistently of ceasing to have the sovereign of London as head of state a Ottawa, Canberra e Wellington.