Republic Move Comes Under Fire

Some members of the academic community have frowned on the exclusion of ordinary Barbadians in the process that led to Barbados’s transition from a constitutional monarchy to a republic on 30 November 2021.

Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute

of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES)

Professor Don Marshall described the transition as soulless, while President of the Barbados Economic Society (BES) and Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Economics Dr. Simon Naitram said the failure to hold a referendum was extremely ironic and unfortunate given that the process was supposed to be about making the country more democratic.

The two spoke at a virtual town hall meeting held on 14 October 2021 entitled “Constitutional Reform and

the Republic: Symbolism, Substance, and Implication”

that was jointly hosted by the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Social Sciences.

Professor Don Marshall

The other panellists were Caribbean Policy Analyst and Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Economics, Dr. Dalano DaSouza; Senior Lecturer in Political Science in the Department of Government, Sociology, Social Work and Psychology, Dr. Tennyson Joseph; and President of the Law Society, Mr. Pierre Cooke. Professor Marshall said during the process of decolonisation, the matrices of social and economic power should ultimately be dismantled, thereby giving rise to new patterns of wealth creation and economic classes. However, he said specific, social, elite classes and racial groups continue to dominate Barbados and intergenerational wealth continues to elude Black Barbadians. “We have run our economy on the basis of FIRE, which has to do with finance, insurance, import trading, and real estate. The commercial and merchant capital juggernaut in Barbados remains the same; that is why we have a soulless republican transition. Deep in the bone marrow of the Black majority in Barbados, we have not yet made the transition to see the rise of a new economic class of entrepreneurs Dr. Simon Naitram seized by the fact they can pursue new

models of entrepreneurship, not necessarily in areas that were already dominated by elites at the time of independence.”

BES President Dr. Naitram said the absence of wider engagement was a missed opportunity to make a democratic decision, and the failure of a referendum in other Caribbean countries was not a reason to bypass the vote. Despite these issues, he did not foresee any significant direct economic impact for Barbados due to its break from Britain.

“It’s not going to have any genuine economic impact directly either negatively or positively. I don’t think there will be serious change in external relationships, particularly given that we haven’t seriously received any special treatment from our ‘parent country’, the United Kingdom, and they are increasingly becoming a weaker force in the international sphere.”

“Persons almost feel that everything substantive was done already. But I think that if you are decolonising and you are making a statement of a clear break with the British, that the head of state is a British monarch, and you’re bringing that to an end, that cannot, in my view, be just symbolic in any way.” Dr. Joseph was hopeful the move by Barbados could set off a chain reaction in the region. “If Little England can make the break, [and] decide to replace the British head of state with a local president, then one of the implications I hope comes out of this is that the other English-speaking Caribbean countries follow suit.” Caribbean Policy Analyst Dr. DaSouza agreed there was a need for deeper conversations in the region beyond the issue of symbolism. “The conversation has to be about where we go from here. We need to address things Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and such as our governance structure Economic Studies (SALISES) Professor Don Marshall [beyond] changing the Governordescribed the transition as soulless, while President of General. the Barbados Economic Society (BES) and Assistant “What happens the day after we become a republic? Is it more of the Lecturer in the Department of Economics Dr. Simon same? Would we be living in a time Naitram said the failure to hold a referendum was where the cost of living exceeds what extremely ironic and unfortunate given that the process we make on a day-to-day basis? That was supposed to be about making the country more is a concern, and I believe, more so for democratic. the Barbadian public.” l

What may change, Dr. Naitram suggested, is Barbadians demanding greater accountability in government.

The President of the Law Society said he was excited about what the transition could mean for not only restructuring the legal and democratic system of the country but also shaping the Barbadian identity and ‘Caribbeanness’. However, he said the symbolism and significance of the change needed to be supported with engaging conversations at the community level.

But political scientist Dr. Joseph contended that the government had already indicated it would undertake a long, detailed examination of the Constitution and suggested that the issue was not widely discussed on the ground level because it was not a revolution taking place, but rather, an evolutionary transformation.