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history, its own peculiar social and racial background, and the
individual strengths and weaknesses of its political leaders. However, the following points might be thought to have general application:-
(a) Once both Parties were committed to independence (and this was, in our view, inevitable given the attitude of Seychelles' African neighbours) the problem was to find a political framework with which all the present generation of Seychelles leaders could live. Their acquaintance, at one remove, with the British Parliamentary system had created a polarity between two parties, both essentially without roots in Seychelles society. Neither had a coherent political philosophy and neither had an appeal to one
sector of the population at the expense of another: both covered the whole range of peoples in a multiracial society practising, or at any rate professing, the same religion. Nor was there a single issue, for instance land reform, which could be raised to create a decisive popular movement in favour of one side rather than the other. What divided the parties was a struggle for ultimate power at the moment of independence. Both knew, from post-colonial history elsewhere, that it was a winner-take-all situation: one party stood to gain power and would maintain that power most probably by the
destruction of the other. It was this that gave Seychelles politics in the period before the first Marlborough House Conference their particular bitterness and made it almost inevitable that the first
Conference should fail.
(b) While, therefore, it might have been possible for HMG to impose a Constitution at the first Marlborough House Conference, containing a rigid set of checks and balances on the power of the majority, both Seychelles parties knew very well that the other would find an early opportunity to overthrow the Constitution as soon as it decently could after independence, Thus an imposed constitution would have been irksome, and perhaps not conducive to firm Government; and it would almost certainly have been a temporary expedient. The
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/ only merit