Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley will lead the Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty (BLP) in­to the next gen­er­al elec­tion, af­ter all, she an­nounced Sat­ur­day night.

Speak­ing at a BLP ral­ly to cel­e­brate the par­ty’s St James North by-elec­tion vic­to­ry, the 59-year-old leader told sup­port­ers that al­though she said in 2022 that the cur­rent term would be her last, the grav­i­ty of na­tion­al and glob­al chal­lenges and the wide­spread ap­peals from cit­i­zens across the coun­try had com­pelled her to re­main.

In 2022, I told you that that would be my last time. I did so be­cause I had just gone through…six or sev­en months of true stress,” Mot­t­ley said, ref­er­enc­ing the emo­tion­al strain she en­dured af­ter the death of her broth­er. “I came to un­der­stand that true lead­er­ship is nev­er about com­fort. It is about call­ing, it is about tim­ing, and it is about ser­vice.”

Mot­t­ley told the gath­er­ing that over the past year, and es­pe­cial­ly in re­cent weeks, she has been urged by mem­bers of her par­ty, civ­il so­ci­ety, the pri­vate sec­tor, the labour move­ment, con­stituents and oth­er cit­i­zens to re­main in lead­er­ship.

Cit­ing the weight of glob­al in­sta­bil­i­ty—from wars in Ukraine and Gaza to ten­sions in the In­do-Pa­cif­ic and the cli­mate cri­sis—Mot­t­ley said Bar­ba­dos must not be left adrift amid tur­bu­lent times.

“And if you add to that an op­po­si­tion that re­sem­bles more of a pres­sure group than a po­lit­i­cal par­ty of 70 years, this coun­try of ours de­serves sta­bil­i­ty and steadi­ness,” she said, tak­ing aim at the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty (DLP).

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so stressed that Bar­ba­dos is still in a pe­ri­od of na­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion that be­gan when the BLP took of­fice in 2018. She not­ed that the first year and a half of her sec­ond term, which be­gan with the 2022 snap elec­tion, was still heav­i­ly fo­cused on man­ag­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“There is no doubt that the wa­ter is still chop­py,” she said. “I came to the con­clu­sion a few weeks ago that this is no longer a per­son­al de­ci­sion, but it is a de­ci­sion of du­ty.”

She re­it­er­at­ed her com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing the lives of Bar­ba­di­ans and con­tin­u­ing to lead a now sea­soned team of min­is­ters: “Every­thing I have done in pub­lic life has been to try to make the lives of Ba­jans bet­ter, to fight in­jus­tice…and to make this coun­try the best that it can be.”

Mot­t­ley, who be­came Bar­ba­dos’ first fe­male prime min­is­ter in 2018 and led the BLP to a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive clean sweep of all 30 par­lia­men­tary seats in 2022, said she be­lieves her team is now more pre­pared than ever to de­liv­er the trans­for­ma­tion the coun­try needs.

“I be­lieve that this team that I have has so ma­tured,” she said. “And for me to do any­thing that would cause this coun­try not to ful­ly ben­e­fit from the ma­tu­ri­ty of this team that I am proud to lead, would be a trav­es­ty.”

De­clar­ing her con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to the peo­ple of Bar­ba­dos and her St Michael North East con­stituen­cy, she end­ed her ad­dress with a clear state­ment of in­tent: “I will stay with you. I will stand with you.”

The next gen­er­al elec­tion is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due by 2027.