By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

ADMITTING concern over what Dr Bernard Nottage may have battled in isolation during his last days, former Prime Minister Perry Christie yesterday expressed admiration for the effort put forth by the former national security minister in the build-up to the May general election.

Breaking away from his public silence since being voted out of office in historic fashion last month, a visibly troubled Mr Christie detailed portions of his last conversation with his childhood friend and longtime political colleague on Thursday.

The former Centreville MP saw Dr Nottage as someone who “fought tenaciously” throughout his life for those he loved and supported, a trait he said he saw on display up to their last conversation.

“I went up the night he was admitted . . . and we were able to have an extended discussion, one in which I spoke about childhood moments, about moments in England together, about our aspirations to help the country and then I asked him if he had the will to live and the will to fight.

“I asked him if he knew the extent to which he was ill and he replied to me, he said ‘yes.’

“(I asked if) he understood the challenges the doctors would have, he said ‘yes.’

“And I said, ‘you know BJ, you and I started together and you and I, fortuitously, will end together. The curtain has come down on our political lives, that historians would have the opportunity to review what we have done and determine the extent to which we had done good and that we had improved the situation in our country, and that will take time.’

“I said, ‘in the meantime, we have to adjust to the circumstances that exist and that we have to be able to assist our party in rebuilding and you know, that kind of conversation.’ And his answers were ‘yes, yes.’”

Mr Christie said he knew at that moment he was speaking to someone “incredibly challenged,” a person he feared might not make it.

Mr Christie said during the waning moments of their last term in office, he had times questioned the well-being of his longtime friend and worried about his seemingly worsening health.

He added that his worry grew to great concern after Dr Nottage appeared ill at a Progressive Liberal Party campaign rally in late April. At the time PLP officials described Dr Nottage’s condition as “dehydration.”

Mr Christie said Dr Nottage’s actions then resembled his own following a mild stroke he had in May 2005.

“I had seen the trans ischemic attack when he was on the platform, I can call it that because I had once had one myself, I knew how quickly I reacted to mine (and) I knew that that saved me and enabled me to sit here and to articulate and analyse and I felt he didn’t,” Mr Christie said.

“I knew the kinds of treatments and medicines that you must have and I became concerned.”

A somewhat dispirited Mr Christie went on to recall moments during his last term in office when he openly questioned Dr Nottage on his health.

“When I think back over the last two months of the Cabinet, many days he would be quiet,” Mr Christie said.

“But, he never told us how sick he was. We had to guess during moments of silence and non-participation that something was going on.

“Even when I inquired and inquired of him, ‘what is happening BJ,’ he would shrug his shoulders.

“And so, the night I was called and told the amount of challenges he had, I had to assume those challenges existed when he was running (for re-election), and the question was, ought he have been running?

“It meant that he was campaigning while he was dying, that is what it meant. That this only came to a head at a certain stage while he was walking around house to house, going in to people asking them to support him.

“He was very sick and irretrievably so, what was happening, as we found out.

“Thinking back, my brother was desperately ill when he was doing these things, and did he know, and did he believe that he had to get these things in and if he had disclosed his illness, we would have prevented him from running?

“Most certainly I would have to ensure that he protected himself because even though we ran against each other three times, anyone who watched me deal with BJ must know that there was a love.”

Dr Nottage, 71, was airlifted to the United States on Friday after spending three days in the Intensive Care Unit at Doctors Hospital.

He died Wednesday.

Mr Christie further recalled of his friend: “He was someone who brought incredible discipline, an incredible knowledge of the Bahamas; a very innovative and very strong against slackness.

“We valued his participation, his level of discernment and to be able to protect the government from any kind of decision making that might not be the right kind.”

He added: “(Dr Nottage) preformed magnificently. He was able to articulate precisely what he was thinking and maybe the surgeon in him gave him that kind of incisive thinking.”

Following the party’s defeat at the hands of the Free National Movement in the 1997 general election, PLP Leader Sir Lynden Pindling appointed Mr Christie and Dr Nottage as co-deputy leaders of the party.

Following Sir Lynden’s death, Mr Christie ascended to the post of leader by narrowly defeating Dr Nottage - an event Mr Christie gave as the reason he kept Dr Nottage so close to him.

Dr Nottage left the PLP to assist in the formation of the Coalition for Democratic Reform (CDR), a party he would unsuccessfully lead into the 2002 general election.

In 2005, he returned to the then governing PLP and was afterwards appointed to the Senate.

A short time later, Dr Nottage was appointed minister of health and National Insurance by Mr Christie, then prime minister.

Of these events, Mr Christie remarked Thursday: “I went looking for him when he was CDR in 2005 and persuaded him to come into the Cabinet, put him in the Senate and made him minister of health.

“I would always find reason because he had this wonderful ability to speak truth to issues and fearlessness to speak truth to issues some people sort of pander (to because) the prime minister wants (it) to happen. But he was one of those ministers who challenged, didn’t hesitate to say I don’t agree.”