WHEN SANDRA MASON gave her annual “throne speech” to open Barbados’s Parliament on September 15th, she proposed the abolition of her own job. As the country’s governor-general she represents Queen Elizabeth II, its head of state. From November next year, in time for the 55th anniversary of independence from Britain, Barbados will be a republic, Dame Sandra declared. “The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind,” she said. “Barbadians want a Barbadian head of state.”
