Battle over Achuthanandan is weakening CPM
The decade-old war between the neo-liberalists in the Kerala CPI(M) and party central committee member VS Achuthanandan, a traditional Marxist leader, is not just an internal matter of that party any more, but it is already affecting the political life of the State. The fact is that the Marxist party, perhaps the biggest political outfit in the State, is getting no time to consider the State's serious political affairs and oppose the alleged bad governance of the Congress-led UDF regime, rendering it unable to fulfill its task as the head of the Opposition.
The entire energy of the neo-liberalists who enjoy brutal majority in all the party committees right from the State secretariat to the branch committees is focussed on removing the 89-year-old Mr Achuthanandan as the State Assembly's Opposition leader, a position they were forced to give him after the 2011 election. Ironically, Mr Achuthanandan remains the only popular face of the CPI(M) and this was proved in the 2011 election when his whirlwind campaign across the State helped the left win 68 of the 140 seats in the Assembly and thus save the honour of the CPI(M) nationally when it faced a rout in West Bengal.
Mr Achuthanandan's biggest mistake was to ask the central leadership for action against State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, head of the neo-liberalists, for his alleged role in the Rs 374.5 crore SNC lavalin corruption case in which he is the seventh accused. This was in 2009 and the result was that the octogenarian leader got demoted from the Politbureau to the central committee. Since then, the neo-liberalists have not taken a day's rest in their battle against the traditionalist leader. And, gossip is that general secretary Prakash Karat is supporting the neo-liberalists in their war against the senior-most leader of the party.
The CPI(M) leadership is accusing Mr Achuthanandan of repeatedly violating the ‘leninist’ organisational discipline with his anti-leadership positions. The last example of this was when he got into an open confrontation with the leadership over the murder of rebel Marxist leader TP Chandrasekharan of Onchiyam, Kozhikode on May 4 last year, for which at least two dozen Marxist leaders have been arrested. The party has rejected allegations against it in this regard but Mr Achuthanandan — like a large section of the public — thinks otherwise. The Communist Party of India, the lDF’s second biggest constituent, recently complained at a coalition meeting that “certain problems” were blocking the Opposition's agitations from becoming successes and Mr Vijayan himself had to agree to this.
The Congress and the UDF in the State are in a mess despite their continuance in power, thanks to a wafer-thin majority. But the Opposition is unable to put up any pressure on the regime even on crucial issues. If this situation is allowed to continue, the CPI(M), and, therefore, the left as a whole, in Kerala will have to repent after the next lok Sabha election.