Barbados has elected its first president with just weeks to go until the Caribbean island becomes a republic and ceases to recognise Queen Elizabeth as its head of state.
The island’s governor general, Dame Sandra Mason, was elected almost unanimously by the former British colony’s parliament on Wednesday, with only one member declining to vote.
Mason, a 72-year-old judge and former ambassador, will be sworn in on 30 November, the 55th anniversary of her country’s independence from Britain in 1966.
The prime minister, Mia Mottley, hailed what she called a historic landmark for the island of about 290,000 inhabitants. “How can anyone deny the rightness of the moment?” Mottley said, according to the Barbadian newspaper the Nation. » | Tom Phillips | Thursday, October 21, 2021
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. »
