BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — Barbados Prime Minister Freundel Stuart says his Democratic Labour Party (DLP) will win the next general elections constitutionally due in 2018.

In the last general election held on February 21, 2013, Stuart led the DLP to a narrow 16-14 victory over the Barbados Labour Party (BLP).

Addressing the Errol Barrow Memorial Church Service on Sunday, Prime Minister Stuart brushed aside calls by the main opposition party and its leader Mia Mottley for fresh general elections citing the current state of the island’s economy.

“I want to exhort members of the Democratic Labour Party not to grow wary … you have nothing to be ashamed of, don’t get distracted by a lot of the incoherent noises you hear from time to time. Those issues are going to be settled on a date that I will determine.

“We will rout our adversaries and put them to flight,” he said at the Church service held at New Testament Church of God, in St Lucy, north of here.

“I have said over and over again …a horse can look very very fast when it is training by itself….he is training by himself and he looks very fast, but …when he has the real competition you realise he was not good at all,” Stuart said, using the popular Barbados Gold Cup to illustrate the strength of the opposition.

Prime Minister Stuart said that many wealthy developed countries are still feeling the effects of the global financial crisis, and therefore it is no surprise that a small, fragile, developing country like Barbados should continue to feel the effects as well.

“Now that is not an excuse, it’s an explanation,” he said, adding “it is the kind of explanation which is required to be given in Barbados because over the last eight years, there have been a number of false prophets running around trying to give the impression that we in Barbados are in a collection of Robinson Crusoe’s on our own little island – that we are not affected by what happens anywhere else; that we can make our own decisions, do our own thing and we can be as viable as we want. Not true!”

He told the congregation that “it would have been a good thing if all the tourists that Barbados depended on came from St Lucy.

“We have to depend on them coming from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and other parts of the Caribbean,” he said, adding “similarly, for our International Business and Financial Services sector, we also have to depend on what is going on in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada in particular if we are going to get the kind of business out of the North Atlantic, to build our national business and financial services sector”.

Prime Minister Stuart said that the late Errol Barrow, who would have been celebrating his 97th birthday on January 21, is still the most quoted politician in Barbados, 30 years after his death.

“We memorialise him because of the great contribution which he has made to the development of Barbados – in our enrichment and to our education.

“He came not to see what he could get out of politics, but he came to see what he could give to it… We in the Democratic Labour Party have every reason to feel proud that he has been our leader and that he has contributed as much as he was able to contribute, using the Democratic Labour Party as his vehicle to the people of Barbados.”