Barbados Elects Its First Head of State, Replacing Queen Elizabeth
Also: Barbados elects first ever president ahead of becoming republic (BBC)
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Source: New York Times
Barbados Elects Its First Head of State, Replacing Queen Elizabeth
The country’s Parliament chose Sandra Mason, the governor general, to assume the symbolic title, a decisive move to distance itself from Barbados’s colonial past.
By Christine Hauser
Oct. 22, 2021, 4:10 p.m. ET
The island nation of Barbados has elected a female former jurist to become its next head of state, a symbolic position held since the 1950s by Queen Elizabeth II, as the country takes another step toward casting off its colonial past.
Sandra Mason, 72, the governor general of Barbados, became the country’s first president-elect on Wednesday when she received the necessary two-thirds majority vote in the Parliament’s House of Assembly and Senate. She will be sworn in on Nov. 30, making Barbados a republic on the 55th anniversary of its independence from Britain.
“We believe that the time has come for us to claim our full destiny,” Prime Minister Mia Mottley said in a speech after the vote.
“It is a woman of the soil to whom this honor is being given,” she added.
Barbados, a parliamentary democracy of about 300,000 people that is the easternmost island in the Caribbean, announced in September that it would remove Elizabeth as its head of state. At the ceremony, Ms. Mason read from a speech prepared by Ms. Mottley that was explicit in its rejection of imperialism.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/world/americas/sandra-mason-barbados.html
Dame Sandra Mason, seen here in London, has been Barbados' governor-general since 2018
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Source: BBC
Barbados elects first ever president ahead of becoming republic
21 October 2021
Barbados has elected its first ever president as it prepares to become a republic, removing Queen Elizabeth as head of state.
Dame Sandra Mason, 72, is set to be sworn in on 30 November, which will mark the country's 55th anniversary of independence from Britain.
The first woman to serve on the Barbados Court of Appeals, Dame Sandra has been governor-general since 2018.
The government announced the plan to move to a republic status last year.
It said "the time [had] come" for Barbados to "fully leave our colonial past behind". The change had already been recommended by a constitutional review in 1998.
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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-58993728