Barbados yesterday stopped pledging allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, as it shed another vestige of its colonial past and became a republic for the first time in history.
Several leaders, dignitaries and artists, including Prince Charles and Rihanna, attended the ceremony that began late on Monday in a popular square where the statue of a well-known British lord was removed last year amid a worldwide push to erase symbols of oppression.
Fireworks peppered the sky at midnight as Barbados officially became a republic, with screens set up across the island so people could watch the event that featured an orchestra with more than 100 steel pan players and numerous singers, poets and dancers.
Photo: Reuters
It was also broadcast online, prompting a flurry of excited messages from Bajans living in the US, Canada and beyond.
“Happy Independence Day and freedom to all,” one viewer wrote.
The drive to become a republic began more than two decades ago and culminated with the island’s parliament electing its first president last month in a two-thirds majority vote.
Barbados Governor General Sandra Mason was sworn in as president before dawn yesterday as the island marked its 55th anniversary of independence from Britain.
“As cautioned by our first prime minister ... we ought no longer to be found loitering on colonial premises,” she said. “We must seek to redefine our definition of self, of state, and the Barbados brand, in a more complex, fractured and turbulent world... Our country and people must dream big dreams and fight to realize them.”
Mason, 72, is an attorney and judge who also has served as ambassador to Venezuela, Colombia, Chile and Brazil.
She is to help Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley lead the wealthy Caribbean island of more than 300,000 people that is dependent on tourism, manufacturing and finance.
Barbados did not need permission from the UK to become a republic, although the island will remain a member of the Commonwealth Realm.
It is an event that the Caribbean has not experienced since the 1970s, when Guyana, Dominica and Trinidad and Tobago became republics.
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