I see that Prime Minister Christie has begun his campaign to stay on as Leader of the PLP.
Before the last election, Christie said that if the PLP was elected and he became prime minister again, he would not serve a full term. Many in his party, who already believed that it was past the time for him to go, agreed to give the old guy the opportunity to gain the minimum required eight years in the office of Prime Minister to qualify for a full pension. The PLP won the elections and all assumed that Mr Christie would serve the minimum required eight years and demit office.
Mr Christie’s Deputy, Brave Davis, has been itching to take over the reins of Party Leadership since his professionally organised campaign to become Deputy Leader.
But ever the sly one, at age 70 and in his seventh year in office as prime minister, Mr Christie is sending strong signals that he is not going anywhere. Even The Nassau Guardian’s editorial board, which has long campaigned for an amendment to the Prime Minister’s Pension Act to reduce the number of years one must serve as prime minister to qualify for a full pension – apparently believing that this would encourage Mr Christie to go early – concluded in today’s editorial that Mr Christie isn’t going anywhere.
Mr Christie’s plan to stay on was made very clear in his interview with the Nassau Guardian as reported in National Review on Monday, 3 February. In the interview, Mr Christie tied his not returning as Leader of the PLP and leading the party into the 2017 General Election on whether former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham returns to frontline politics. A strange position if I have ever heard one.
Mr Christie did not suggest that he might be minded to stay on because he believes he will not have completed his agenda for this term in office by 2017. Instead, he said the one thing that would make him stay on was the return of a former prime minister to frontline politics. Under those circumstances, he said “all bets are off”.
That is Mr Christie’s position notwithstanding that the former prime minister resigned from the leadership of his party and also gave up his seat in the House of Assembly. Mr Christie has long been considered long-winded and a bit lazy. Now his interview with the Guardian revealed that he is actually a self-absorbed political operative.
Some acquaintances laugh that he considers himself handsome and is obsessed with being perceived as young and virulent – which must account for the great care he takes to thoroughly dye black each and every grey strand as it appears on his head.
To describe him as a power hungry, self-centred narcissist would, in my opinion, not be an exaggeration. That is why I agree with the Guardian editorialists, Mr Christie isn’t going anywhere; and those aspiring to leadership of the PLP had better get used to the idea.
By: Cecile Evans
