Barbados Prime Minister Freundel Stuart
Prime Minister Freundel Stuart has verbally hit back at Leader of the Opposition Mia Mottley ahead of a planned no-confidence motion.
He is accusing her of trying to clean house in the guise of filing the action against his government in the House of Assembly.
Mottley has said that the decision is in response to persistent crises caused by poor governance, including the most recent downgrade by international credit rating firm Moody’s Investors Service.
But Stuart told a Democratic Labour Party constituency meeting last night that the opposition leader is merely putting up a smokescreen.
He suggested that she has resorted to this plan because her time as chairman of the Barbados Labour Party is almost at an end due to a term limit stipulation in the party’s constitution.
“Since she cannot stand for re-election, because they have term limits in that regard, she is not going to be chairman of the party when the party goes into general elections. She fears that whoever takes over the party in October this year may reverse much of what she has already done,” he suggested.
“What they are saying is ‘we don’t have to win the next election. Ms. Mottley is still a relatively young woman, she can wait so let us clean out the cupboards of the Barbados Labour Party, [remove] all those people who don’t support her and rebuild the party in her image’.”
If filed, this will be the third no-confidence motion brought by the BLP against the DLP administration since it took office.
During last night’s meeting, the prime minister also responded to the latest Moody’s downgrade, saying he was not unnerved by it.
While urging residents not to be confused, he said it was significant that despite the downgrade the agency’s outlook for Barbados was stable.
He said his government intends to continue pushing its economic programme.
“We are restructuring the Barbados economy to make sure that in the future when things happen beyond Barbados’ shores…that Barbados will be better positioned to absorb these shocks and not be destabilised as was the case on this occasion and previous occasions,” Stuart added.