By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

PRIME Minister Perry Christie said it would take a “compelling, tangible” reason for him to lead the Progressive Liberal Party into the next general election, revealing that he told his family during the lead-up to the last general election that the 2012 campaign would be his last.

Nonetheless, he added that people across the country continually urge him to remain leader of the PLP.

His comments came during the second part of a pre-recorded interview with State of Affairs, which was broadcast by ZNS on Tuesday night

before he left the country for China on official business.

“At this stage I do not know,” he said when asked about the possibility of extending his time in public life past this current term. “What I do know is that it would have to take compelling reasons for me to stay and those reasons have to do a lot with people, a lot with party sentiments, my colleagues who are with me in government but I would never, ever contemplate doing something like extending myself unless there was (a) compelling reason to do so.”

Mr Christie suggested that he made a conscious decision to stop talking about his political future, prompting critics to conclude that he has no plan to surrender leadership.

“I can tell you, I’m (hearing) from all quarters, from all over the Bahamas, people will say to me: ‘You have no place to go.’ I know how that has amounted to disappointment in the form of people who expect or who aspire to be leaders of the PLP and I expect in a democratic country, just as Dr (Bernard) Nottage decided to run against me at a time when I least expected it, but he’s my friend for life. He ran against me, we had a contest, I won the contest; the next moment I said ‘Come my brother, let’s get back together, let’s move on.’ That’s the way in which we deal with issues in this party.”

Mr Christie was referring to his time in opposition, when Dr Nottage challenged him for the PLP’s leadership.

“I told my family at the start of the campaign in 2012, this was the final campaign for me,” Mr Christie added. “I do know that people like Charles Carter would come to me and say ‘Stop from talking about you going; people will see you as a lame duck, say nothing about it.’ So I just stopped talking about it and as I stopped talking about it, then everybody became strident, ‘Oh he’s staying on, oh he’s doing that.”

“But something has to happen tangibly, politically, for there to be an understanding that I’m going to remain in public life,” he said. “I choose to focus on the fact that I have the opportunity to be a defining prime minister in this term, that I’ve had 40 consecutive years in public life, by the time I go to election I may have reached the stage almost of Sir Lynden Pindling, meaning that only Sir Roland Symonette is ahead of me. Now I have to be crazy if I were to be thinking of Sir Roland Symonette.

“I don’t know if I’m going to live that long, because he did 50 plus years at least so for me moving forward, I hope that I’m in good health and I’m able to demonstrate that I’m very energetic, that I have a tremendous grasp for the country and the way it should be going, that I’m amused when people talk about they need something new because I believe the policies and the innovations that I’m introducing are new to the Bahamas.”

However, last November Mr Christie told reporters he was prepared to lead the party into the next general election, but said no decision had been made. He also said he was “focused” completely on this term.

“Yes. I am always prepared,” he said last year, when asked if he was prepared to lead his party into another election. “Whether I go another term is another matter, but I am preparing, and I am preparing the party and the country for the kind of future it is going to have.”