The New Republic of Barbados
Barbados has just become a republic, stripping the Queen of her few remaining powers. So, what does that mean?
Well, the position of Governor-General has been removed, and replaced with a Presidency. The President of Barbados is the head of state and of the armed forces, and is the source of executive power. In practice and by convention, though, executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister and the cabinet. The President can also ‘withhold consent’ for parliamentary bills (basically a veto), appoint judges (under the joint recommendation of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition), and pardon offenders. The President appoints senators too, 12 according to the Prime Minister’s recommendation, 2 by that of the Leader of the Opposition, and the remaining 7 at the President’s own discretion. The Presidential office has a few other powers, but you can go through their constitution yourself if you want to find out about them (it’s so vague and relies on convention so much, I find it a tad distasteful).
The President being head of the armed forces doesn’t make this nearly as powerful a position as it sounds. The Chief of Staff actually has all the power, and just has to follow the directions of the President, but the Prime minister can also give directions. So given that nearly everything to do with the President relies on convention, the amount of power the President has is really dependent on how much they care about convention.
As far as I can tell, the parliament essentially used the legal equivalent of a ‘Find and Replace’ function to amend the constitution, with article 6 of the constitutional amendment stating:
“any reference to Her Majesty the Queen, whether or not that expression is used, or to the Crown or to the Sovereign shall be read and construed as if it were a reference to the State;
any reference to the Governor-General, shall be read and construed as if it were a reference to the President;
any reference to Crown lands shall be read and construed as a reference to State lands;
and any reference to Her Majesty’s dominions shall be read and construed as a reference to the Commonwealth.“
The rest of this constitutional amendment is mainly just sorting out the legal nitty-gritty of the transition process, like what the transition actually means, what that will involve, and replacing chapter IV (the one about the Governor-General) with a new one about the President. Dame Sandra Mason, the last Governor-General of Barbados, has become it’s first President (making Barbados the only presidential country to never have had a male president). While I really don’t like their constitution, at least now it’s just bad instead of bad and anti-democratic.
