In tangible ways the directorates of both parties -- the People's Progressive Party (PPP) and the People's National Congress (PNC) are in control of the destiny of our nation. These are authentic political parties with large mass bases. Together they account for support from over 95 percent of the voting population and enlist in their rank and file, the two major race groupings in Guyana.

For many years, since 1955 when the PPP was split (and the PNC emerged as the splinter party in 1957), Guyana literally was also divided.

The late President Cheddi Jagan, the founder of the PPP as a united nationalist movement, had always seen that "split" as being at the root of Guyana's problem. He had throughout his life fought for national reconciliation by promoting modes of racial and working class unity. Later, he called for a state of national democracy to embrace all groups and strata in the society.

In what will be one of his most memorable speeches in Toronto in November 1996, Cheddi Jagan called for the return to the 1950s, when the Guyanese people were united. He said then, just three months before his death, that our major races and the political parties should find ways of working together for the national interest.

What Cheddi Jagan wanted was not just the linking of hands. He wanted a linking of minds between the major parties so that they would cooperate for the national good. The linking of hands was indeed an attempt to put together a garland of love that, once placed over the shoulders of our maximum leaders (and elders), would open their minds to new thinking and to the politics of reconciliation and cooperation.

For this political will is needed, and a strategic vision. We must courageously look back and see where Guyana would have been, had past conflicts been avoided. Then we should look ahead and imagine what Guyana could be had the present not been allowed to escalate into a frenzy of fear and insecurity.

We are aware that beneath the placid exterior of mutual suspicions for each other, there are healthy desires in both the PPP and the PNC to forge strategic links for the common good.

It is in this sense that we welcome the latest coalition initiative of the PNC to work with the PPP and other political forces in the governance of the state. While we do not wish to comment on the contents of the initiative, we nevertheless recognize its merit, coming at this time when there is seemingly a political gridlock.

On its part, the idea of alliance and coalition politics is not new for the PPP. In its very formation it was a national coalition of all interests opposed to colonialism and, in the pre-1992 period, a national coalition opposed to dictatorship. In the 1960s Cheddi Jagan had made formal proposals for coalition building, and he repeated his quest for unity though in changed forms when he proposed throughout the decades of the 70s, 80s and 90s ideas for strategic alliance among political parties that are patriotic and progressive.