Why Barbados plans to remove Queen Elizabeth as its head of state?

Team Udayavani, Sep 18, 2020, 2:14 PM IST

Barbados has announced its intention to remove Queen Elizabeth as its head of state and become a republic

A former British colony that gained independence in 1966, Barbados has maintained a formal link with the monarchy like some other countries that were once part of the British empire.

According to Politico, The removal of the British monarchy is due to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Barbadian independence, due in November 2021.

The plan has been suggested several times in the past. This time it coincides with the Black Lives Matter movement sparked by several killings of Black people by police in the US.

The vast majority of Barbados’s 286,000 people are Black, with ancestry traced to enslaved Africans brought to the West Indies by the British in the 17th century to plant and harvest sugar cane.

As reported by Al Jazeera, Sandra Mason, the Governor-General of Barbados said, “Barbados has developed governance structures and institutions that mark us as what has been described as the best governed Black society in the world”

The move would make Barbados the first country to drop the monarch since Mauritius did it nearly three decades ago in 1992.