When not swinging in the 'wrong jungle', Mr. Robert Pickersgill, Cabinet minister and chairman of the governing People's National Party make's a habit of peering through rose-tinted glasses. Or, maybe these days, yellow ones - frames and lenses.

So Mr Pickersgill promised to have Jamaica "pot hole-free by 2003" - about which we now laugh. Heartily!

Now, according to Mr. Pickersgill, the PNP is as "United as can be at this stage" and "Wwe are now on our way". We suppose Mr. Pickersgill means, to a fifth consecutive term in government. His party may yet get this, but not because it is united.

Mr. Pickersgill may, with some justification, point to his qualification of "at this stage". For at an earlier stage, the gaping wounds in the PNP, were even more raw, tending to the putrid. There have been some attempt at sutures, but the gashes are far from healed.

What it appears Mr Pickersgill, and perhaps his party leader, Mrs. Simpson Miller would wish the rest of us to translate as a united party is the intention of the PNP to appoint Dr. Paul Robertson, the former development minister as the party's campaign director for the next general election. Dr. Robertson, who will not seek re-election to Parliament, did a similar job for Dr. Peter Phillips, Mrs. Simpson Miller's close runner-up in the race for the party's presidency in February.

This, however, does not represent real substance. For the truth is that since the leadership race, two distinct wings have emerged in the PNP, which have not been able to negotiate a workable accommodation.

Mr. Pickersgill, of course, is correct to say after a gruelling leadership contest as the one put on by the PNP, that there would be residual resentments and acrimony. But real quality of leadership should heal wounds and bridge gaps.

Fortunately for their opponents, and negatively for the PNP, neither Prime Minister Simpson Miller nor Dr. Phillips have yet demonstrated this capacity in any abundance. Of course, the leader has the greater responsibility for holding the organisation together and therefore bears the greater burden.

Mrs. Simpson Miller has, therefore, to outline a clear vision for her party, place restraints on the more exuberant of her allies who helped her to victory, eschew paranoia and find ways to embrace her opponents. It can't be just with sweeping gestures, for as she will appreciate, when it comes to the nitty-gritty of organisational management, charisma will be found wanting in the absence of specific and concrete effort.

But if Dr. Phillips is about more than individual glory, he has to drill into his camp that ultimately the leader is the leader. Sitting in corners sulking and wishing the leader and her team to trip over themselves does no credit to the party and certainly not to Dr. Phillips. He has a strong platform in the party having been beaten in a close contest, so he can't be ignored. If Dr. Phillips is, therefore, serious about stopping the rot and healing the party, he would initiate the dialogue and engage in serious, frank talks with his leader.

In the meantime, whatever Mr. Pickersgill is seeing through those glasses of his, the PNP is nearly as divided as when the left and right were at each other's throats in the 1970s.