Barbados rejects the Queen in front of the Crown Prince

british queen Elizabeth He would therefore not be head of the Caribbean island nation, which gained independence from Britain in 1966.

As a girl, when I heard about the Queen, I was elated. But as I got older, I began to wonder what this queen really meant to me and my country. He says it didn’t make sense Sharon Bellamy ThompsonWho works as a fishmonger in the capital, Bridgetown, told AFP.

On the fifty-fifth day after independence, the current representative of the Queen in the country, the Governor-General, arrived Sandra Mason, to be sworn in as the country’s first president.

– Bellamy Thompson says it would be great to have a boss.

Barbados’ decision was announced a year earlier, by Mason in particular.

It is time to leave our colonial heritage completely behind, she said.

At that time, she seemed on the verge of becoming unemployed, but in October of this year, Parliament unanimously appointed her the country’s first female president.

Prime Minister Mia Motley He has long advocated leaving the country for the monarchy. Her Labor party won all 30 seats in the House of Representatives in a landslide victory in the 2018 election, when she became the country’s first woman prime minister.

bad timing?

Opposition is also positive about the republic, although the timing – as the tourism-dependent country grapples with high unemployment and an epidemic – is considered better by critics.

– Adequate distraction, prescribed Jay HewittThe former High Commissioner of Barbados in the United Kingdom and representatives of the opposition, working this summer.

However, he believed it was time to end the British monarchy.

To become a republic means to grow up. He tells CNN I do something like when a kid grows up and gets his house, takes out his own mortgage, and returns the parents’ keys when he says it’s time to move on.

Barbados is the oldest British colony, and was ruled from London between 1627 and 1966. The relationship between the two countries is “delicate and complex”. Some believe that British colonialism and slavery are behind the inequality that exists in Barbados today.

– Colonialism is behind the fact that the majority of the population is here. At the same time, the British Crown has invested heavily in slavery, Kevin Farmer, deputy director of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, tells Foreign Policy.

Prince in place

However, it is not a matter of severing ties with Britain. Barbados is still part of the British Commonwealth and the Crown Prince Charles Guest of honor at the transition party.

“It was important for me to be here with you to reaffirm the things that do not change. For example, the close and reliable partnership between Barbados and the United Kingdom as vital parts of the Commonwealth,” he is expected to say in an excerpt from the speech.

The Barbados decision means that Queen Elizabeth is now head of state in 15 countries. It remains to be seen if more will be inspired to cut the strips. In Jamaica, these voices have risen.

Canada, Australia or New Zealand are not likely to be affected by constitutional decisions in Barbados. But he says there may be some influence in the Caribbean Aaron Kamujisha, a professor at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill i Bridgetown, until Foreign Policy.