Barbados has announced its intention to remove the Queen of England as the Head of State by next year. Barbados believes that other Caribbean Islands who sticks to the same protocol will soon follow.
It is quite unusual for a country to remove the Queen as the head of its state, and according to a report by BBC News, the last country to do so was Mauritius in 1992. However, Barbados is up to the shifting game.
Caribbean countries like Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and the Dominican Republic became Republics back in the ’70s.
Barbados aims to fully become a Republic in heels time for the country’s 55th Independence Day celebration in November 2021.
Buckingham Palace said that the idea was not a complete surprise given that it had been in talks publicly many times, the matter lies entirely in the hands of the government and Barbados’s people.
A delayed decision
Mia Mottley, the first female Prime Minister of Barbados who was elected in 2018, announced the matter saying, “the time has come to leave our colonial past behind fully.”
The announcement was made over a speech read by Dame Sandra Mason, the Governor-General of the country.
The speech also featured a warning from Errol Barrow, Barbados’s post-independence Prime Minister, who had said that the country must not loiter on colonial premises.
The decision to move away from the Monarchy has been long due for Barbados. Apart from Errol Barrow in 1966, a constitutional review commission also recommended the decision to shift from Monarchy in 1998, as per Sky News.
The erstwhile Prime Minister of the country, Freundel Stuart, also favored Barbados becoming a Republic country.
Other Caribbean countries joining
Barbados is certainly not the first country to establish as a Republic country after a history of colonization.
In the Caribbean Islands alone, Guyana became a republic in 1970, Trinidad and Tobago in 1976, and the Dominican Republic followed them both in 1978.
Apart from these, a total of 15 countries are currently part of the Queen’s realm, and they seem to cherish this relationship as it provides excellent political standing with the United Kingdom and the Royal Family.
Of course, there have been discussions between the said countries about the matter, but the genuine intentions could not be put into action because of other political objectives.
If the recent political moves are considered, the world might witness Jamaica following into Barbados’s footsteps.
And if one considers the Black Lives Matter movement as well, the Caribbean countries would also have some level of pressure to move on from the colonial trauma.
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