Queen Elizabeth II will have one kingdom less than next week after Barbados severed its final imperial ties with Britain.
The island nation will remove the 95-year-old queen as its head of state and declare itself a republic on Monday, CNN commented. The former British colony, which gained independence in 1966, revived its plan to become a republic last September, with Governor-General Sandra Mason saying “the time has come to leave our colonial past behind.” Mason, 73, a former lawyer, will be sworn in as the island’s first president with just under 300,000 residents at a ceremony late Monday night. Barbados’ parliament elected Mason last month.
The celebrations will be attended by Prince Charles, heir to the British throne and future head of the British Commonwealth. He accepted an invitation from Prime Minister Mia Amor Motley to be the guest of honor. “Becoming a republic is coming of age,” said Guy Hewitt, who was Barbados’ high commissioner in the UK between 2014 and 2018. “I make the analogy with when a child grows up and gets his own house, gets his own mortgage, returns it to his parents. the keys, because it says we are moving forward, “he said.
Barbados’ decision to become a republic is the first time in nearly three decades that a country has chosen to remove the British monarch as head of state. The last nation to do so was the island of Mauritius in 1992. Barbados, like Mauritius, intends to remain part of the British Commonwealth, now as a republic.
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