The one-year timeframe for Barbados’ transition to a republic may be too short for any radical changes to be made to the parliamentary system imposed by the British at independence.
That is the view of Political Scientist Dr Kristina Hinds who believes that by November 2021, the major feature of Barbados’ new republic would be a president, whose duties are identical to those of a Governor General.
Nevertheless, she praised the announcement made in Tuesday’s Throne Speech as “long overdue”, following similar promises from previous governments that failed to materialise.
“Even if this is just a change in title, it really is long overdue, because it really shows that we are independent of the United Kingdom, and I don’t see any reason why there has been reluctance to do that. I find it very baffling, because if we have a ceremonial president, how is that different from the Governor General? It is not as if the Queen is coming down here to do anything for Barbados at any point in time or the British Monarchy,” Dr. Hinds told Barbados TODAY.
The UWI lecturer however stressed that efforts to truly dismantle the cloak of colonialism would require a period of dialogue that would last longer than November of next year.
This would include a discussion on whether the new Head of State should be a ceremonial appointee of the Prime Minister or an elected official that could check the tremendous authority currently vested in the Prime Minister.
“I don’t think we can look at a presidency in isolation from the rest of the system. So, although it’s easy to say that you have a president, you would have to work out the relationship between the Cabinet and the Prime Minister by extension,” Dr Hinds explained.
“If this is a mere ceremonial president, it will be similar to a Governor General, but if the Government of Barbados wants to do something more radical, it probably will take longer than a year, because you will be significantly changing our political system.
“If it is a president that we have to vote for, then that will require some changes to how we run our elections; whether we may have two elections, I don’t know. So, I suspect that we will have a ceremonial president, but if we could achieve more than that within a year, that would be impressive,” the UWI lecturer added.
Prime Minister Mia Mottley has not explained the features of the coming republic, except that it would feature a Barbadian Head of State.
Of the Caribbean’s three republics – Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Dominica -, only Guyana has significantly reformed its Westminster parliamentary system to better reflect its reality. According to Dr Hinds, this is the direction in which Barbados should be heading, and as such, she will be keenly monitoring developments coming out of the Thorne Commission on Local Governance.
“Guyana is the only one where the president has some powers. So Guyana actually made the step to reform its constitution. I mean, it is still in many ways part of the Westminster system but they have reformed their Constitution so that they have proportional representation as opposed to first past the post, which we have. That has allowed them to do certain things, like have quotas for the number of women who are candidates,” the academic observed.
“There are people who are simplistic in saying that if we go the route of a republic, we will end up like Guyana. I don’t think that is the case.because the problems in Guyana are a lot deeper rooted than the political or electoral system,” Hinds acknowledged. kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb
