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with appropriate Orders-in-Council in a comparatively short period of time to enable independence to be achieved by
30 June 1976.
A further complication was that these problems had to be tackled in an atmosphere of some uncertainty as to the intentions of the Organisation for African Unity and of the Afro/Asian Solidarity Committee, a Soviet-front organisation based in Cairo with, by now, evidently close links with the SPUP and
particularly René and Sinon, effectively the second in command
of the SPUP.
The Formation of the Coalition; The Interim Constitution:
May-October 1975
11.
The first two of these proved more successful than we could reasonably expect. All the Ministers concerned evidently settled down to work together in an atmosphere of reasonable harmony. In order to ensure that all the more important elements in the
two parties were adequately represented in the coalition government, it had been necessary at Marlborough House to agree to an enlarge-
ment of the Council of Ministers from 5 to 12: 8 from the SDP
including Mancham as Prime Minister and 4 from the SPUP. This in turn required an enlargement of the Legislative Assembly to 25 by the appointment of a further 5 members from the SDP (nominated by Mancham) and 5 from the SPUP (nominated by René). Although this should have rendered both bodies unwieldy, and although it was a more expensive arrangement than might in other circum- stances have been necessary, there is little doubt that it enabled both party leaders to satisfy the ambitions of enough members of their parties to make the Coalition cohesive and invulnerable to attacks from inside, or outside, the respective parties. In the result the Coalition got off to a good start in May 1975 and the interim constitution was introduced without difficulty the following October. The very fact of working together seems to have done much to overcome the mutual suspicions of the two parties; and some of the Ministers, particularly René and Sinon proved surpri- singly effective. Mancham continued to spend rather more time
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/ abroad