Billie Miller

This article is about politician Billie Miller; on the actor see Billy Miller .

Dame Billie Antoinette Miller (born January 8, 1944 in Barbados ) is a politician from Barbados.

Life

Billie Miller is the daughter of longtime MP Frederick Edward Miller who was Minister of Health and Social Services from 1956 to 1961 for Barbados, which was last a province of the West Indian Federation between 1958 and 1962 .

She herself began her political career in 1976 when she was elected in a by-election as a candidate for the Barbados Labor Party (BLP) for the constituency of the City of Bridgetown as a member of the House of Assembly . A few months later she was able to successfully defend her mandate in the general elections and was then appointed Minister for Health and National Insurance in the cabinet of Prime Minister John Michael G. Adams on September 7, 1976 , making her the first female minister from Barbados.

After her re-election as MPs in 1981, she was appointed Minister of Education by Adams at the formation of the new government and, after his death on March 11, 1985, took over the office of Minister of Culture under his successor Harold Bernard St. John . When the BLP suffered a severe electoral defeat against the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) in the parliamentary elections in May 1986 , in which it lost its parliamentary mandate, it was appointed senator . In the following years she was also the leader of the opposition in the Senate .

In the 1991 elections she was re-elected as a representative of the City of Bridgetown constituency to the House of Representatives and was there last from 1993 to 1994 as a representative of Owen Arthur deputy opposition leader.

When the BLP under Owen Arthur won the election in 1994 and Arthur became the new Prime Minister, he appointed Billie Millie to his cabinet on September 7, 1994 as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and International Economy and was Deputy Prime Minister also leader of the government majority in the assembly house (Leader of the House).

As part of a cabinet reshuffle, she gave up the ministries for foreign trade and international economy in June 1995 and instead became Minister for Tourism and International Transport. She has served as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association , Chair of the Women's Development Group of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and President (for the West) of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, among other positions .

As part of a renewed government reshuffle, she was replaced in May 2003 as Deputy Prime Minister and some time later as Dame of St. Andrew (Barbados) was raised to the nobility .

After the BLP's election defeat, she resigned from the government in January 2008 as Minister for Foreign Affairs, Tourism and International Transport.

literature

• Kristina Hinds Harrison: Dame Billie Miller: her political journey . In: Cynthia Barrow-Giles (Ed.): Women in Caribbean politics . Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston, Jamaica 2011, ISBN 976-637-670-0 , pp. 107-116.

Web links

• Billie Miller on rulers.org
• FEMALE MINISTERS OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS