Surprise, surprise.
Perry Christie is prepared to lead the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) into the 2017 general election.
In 1997, when he campaigned for the leadership of the PLP, Christie said he was the "bridge to the future".
Before the election of 2012, he told us in an interview at his home on Cable Beach that he would only serve half of the term as prime minister and then pass the baton to another person.
On the campaign trail, he changed his mind about that, telling voters that if elected he would serve a full term.
But he said he was introducing a new generation of leaders.
Just past the halfway mark of this

term, Christie appears so enamored with power that the thought of giving it up any time soon is not appealing.
Almost 20 years after becoming leader of the PLP, he seems determined to lead the PLP into the next general election in 2017.
Instead of passing the baton as he promised he would, Christie appears to be positioning himself for another run.
He will be 74 in 2017.
Like Pindling in 1997, and Ingraham in 2012, it appears that Christie will wait to be unceremoniously run out of office.
This is a plague that has infected many black leaders. They simply don't know when to leave.
In an interview with us several months ago, the late Dr. Myles Munroe, founder of Bahamas Faith Ministries International, suggested that the political leadership in this country should recognize that its time is over and identify suitable replacements.
"Leadership is a relay. It is not a sprint," Munroe said. "The most important part of a relay is not how fast you run. It is that crucial moment of passing that baton.
"Leadership will be judged not by how fast or how long or great they ran. It is that moment in history when they have to let go of that baton. Nothing can be worse than passing the baton to the next runner, but you are not letting go of it.
"The next election, to me, is the passing of the baton.
"That's a tough moment because there are people who believe [they are] not yet old enough to leave the race.
"Letting it go is tough because if you enjoy power, if you enjoy notoriety, the respect and the recognition and if you confuse your value with your title...you feel like if you let the baton go you let your life go."
In his final interview with us, less than a week before his death, Munroe said he was disturbed by a dream he had.
He spoke of a runner in a coffin, still clutching the baton.
His teachings on leadership transition and knowing when to leave seem so appropriate to this moment in our national development.
Christie has always given the impression that he enjoys power. He loves being prime minister. He reminds us often that he is prime minister.
It seems for now he intends to keep a tight hold on that baton, his past statements on being the bridge to new leadership notwithstanding.
There is a need, we think, for a more mature approach to how we prepare our country for new leadership.
As Munroe opined, "The next election will prove who is mature and who is immature."
He said, "I'm talking among the fathers. It will determine who has vision and who has ambition. Ambition is normally canvassing for personal progress or personal promotion.
"Vision has to do with the progress of other people. This will test who loves the country or who wants to use the country."

Fatigue
Christie has made his contribution to the country, but many Bahamians are sick and tired of his Jurassic style leadership, with many policies and ideas that now seem to be intellectually bankrupt.
What is patently clear is that Christie is long on promises and short on delivery.
He promised that he would decrease crime and the fear of crime, but today's Bahamas is plagued on his watch with alarmingly high crime rates.
As paralysis grips the nation and its government, the prime minister has even stopped talking about crime.
He promised that he would put Bahamians first, but that remains an elusive dream. He promised that he would revive the economy of Grand Bahama, but Grand Bahamians no longer believe him.
During the last general election campaign, Christie promised that he would put Bahamians first, but has insisted on bringing foreign consultants to advise him on value-added tax (VAT), on gaming and now on his pie-in-the-sky dream of national health insurance, which like VAT, will become another nightmare for Bahamian taxpayers. He recently said that national health insurance will cost $600 million.
Christie promised that he would empower Bahamians, but this promise too has evaporated in thin air. He is committed to helping and granting concessions to foreigners, but has frustrated young Bahamian entrepreneurs in their quest for a piece of the economic pie.
Increasingly, it is not only members of the opposition who have become tired of Christie's rants and ravings.
Some senior, veteran and rank and file members of the PLP are now tired of him, tired of his loquacious and oftentimes meandering messages which are often disorganized and confusing.
Christie has demonstrated that he is not prepared to take responsibility for his ill-conceived and ill-advised policies.
In an attempt not to offend the religious community, during the gaming referendum, he maintained that he had no horse in the race, notwithstanding his responsibility as minister of finance to emphasize the need to raise taxes from the web shop industry.
And despite the popular vote against the gaming referendum, he blamed the governor of the Central Bank for ignoring the popular sentiment.
Christie has yet to publically explain what really happened with the letter of intent that was signed by his former parliamentary secretary, Renward Wells, with Stellar Waste to Energy back in July.
He has yet to give the Bahamian people the essential details of Bahamas Resolve Ltd., the company into which he has dumped $100 million of bad commercial loans from Bank of The Bahamas.
Christie has yet to appoint ambassadors to China, Brazil and India, potentially important partners in the development of The Bahamas.
His premature appointment of his designated ambassador to the United States produced a black eye for him.
Now, he is setting the stage to once again be the never-ending bridge to the future, after postponing his decision to demit office at the mid-term.
The challenge of PLP stalwarts, trustees and loyal party supporters is to convince him that it is time to go and that he should abandon any thought of leading his party into the next election.
But many of them will no doubt support his bid to stay on as Christie has proven he is a survivor and knows how to win elections.
For them, he is a means to an end.
While the country would be no better off, they will take a win where they can.
But like the Pied Piper, Christie's continued leadership of the PLP into the next election will probably lead the party and the country to a similar fate that was experienced by the well-intentioned people of Hamelin.
The constituents of Farm Road can unequivocally attest that they are not much better off from Christie's representation of that constituency for nearly 40 years.
Christie should realize that he has taken the country as far as he can and has now exhausted any visionary and progressive contributions that he can make to 21st Century Bahamas.
The country is fatigued by his leadership.
It is neither visionary nor transformational.
We have said it before in this space: Another round of a Christie leadership would likely contribute to a level of stagnation in the way the country is governed.
There is a wide sense among the electorate that Christie's leadership is not engendering excitement for our future prospects as a nation.
While the prime minister contends it would create a distraction to say definitively what he intends to do in 2017, there is also a distraction in not knowing.
Another term of Christie would lock us into a time warp potentially for another five years where we would not have the benefit of the young, bright minds who would be able to advance the country with new ideas.
We hope a change in leadership in this country would mean a whole rethink of our society and a resetting of the agenda. It might at least provide some hope for something transformative.
We suspect, though, that if Christie does put himself forward in the next election, there are voters who supported the PLP in the 2012 election who would roundly reject him and the PLP this next cycle.
Members of a new generation of voters are demanding more and different in their leadership. Christie no longer speaks to them. He remains stuck in an era of politics that these new and younger voters have no fluency in.
Apart from impeding the advancement of young, bright minds in The Bahamas, any effort he takes to hold on to power beyond 2017 could cheat the country of a new injection of fresh leadership.
We are thirsty for a shift in our political culture, a move away from Pindling-dominated politics. This would likely require a generational change in national leadership.
A new Bahamas demands aggressive, progressive, forward thinking for policy formation. It is not likely that we would see that under another term of Perry Christie.
The person who has often characterized himself as "the bridge to the future" should appreciate that at the end of this term, even his bridge is no longer a never-ending one that has to be crossed.

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