The standoff between the CPI(M) and its senior-most leader VS Achuthanandan reached a flashpoint on Sunday with the party serving an ultimatum on him to return to its State conference in Alappuzha and the veteran leader threatening to quit as Kerala Assembly’s Opposition leader and as MlA protesting against the sustained attacks against him by the State leadership and the central leadership’s inability to intervene. The conference will conclude on Monday.
Amidst reports on Achuthanandan’s “hard” decision, party general secretary Prakash Karat conveyed to him the Politburo’s decision to ask him once again to return to the conference. “Nobody is above the party... The CPI(M) is not in the habit of permitting bargaining,” Politburo member Kodiyeri Balakrishnan told newsmen at the meet venue on Sunday.
However, towards late Sunday night, Achuthanandan decided not to put his ‘hard’ decision into practice in a hurry on Monday itself considering the central leadership’s offer to discuss the issues he had raised in the Politburo and central committee of which he is a member, according to sources close to him. He is expected to explain his position to the press on Monday morning.
Achuthanandan had walked out of the conference on Saturday morning pained by the sustained attacks against him by State leadership under secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and his loyalists. On early Sunday morning, he left his ancestral home in Alappuzha for his official residence in Thiruvananthapuram as an indication of his resolve not to make any compromises.
Observers are of the opinion that Achuthanandan may eventually decide to make a compromise as he would not want to part ways with the party of which he was a founder at his advanced age of 91. “He has done it earlier also. He has made climbdowns in the past waging after protracted wars in the party,” said a senior pro-left journalist.
Sources within the CPI(M) said late Sunday evening that Achuthanandan, who had worked with communist movement for 75 years, would not be there in the State committee after its reconstitution on Monday even if he attended the conference, establishing the State leadership’s determination not to make compromises with him and the central leadership’s endorsement for it.
The nonagenarian Marxist, one of the 32 communists who had walked out of the national council of the CPI in 1964 to found the CPI(M), had reportedly taken the decision to quit as Opposition leader pained by the State leadership’s act of describing him as one whose mentality had become totally anti-party through a resolution adopted by the State secretariat on Thursday.
The past two days had seen hectic activities in the CPI(M) and at its the State conference to somehow pacify Achuthanandan with the central leadership considering different options to deal with his demand for the abrogation of the secretariat’s resolution but the State leadership remained firm in decision not to allow that.
The resolution was adopted – allegedly in ways not mandated by the party constitution – in response to a letter Achuthanandan wrote to the Politbureau enumerating the alleged right-wing deviations of the neoliberalist leadership under Pinarayi. Achuthanandan was also held responsible for the leaking this note to the media. However, he has rejected this charge.
A meeting of the available Politburo – there were eight members – was held at the conference venue on Sunday afternoon specifically to consider Achuthanandan’s demands. Though various options came up at the meeting with some members like Sitaram Yechuri supporting Achuthanandan, the forum eventually rejected the demands.
The current standoff between Achuthanandan and the leadership is the culmination of a 13-year-long war between the traditionalists he was leading and the neoliberalists headed by Pinarayi Vijayan. This had cost him his membership in the Politbureau eight years back after he carried out a campaign against Pinarayi over the multi-crore SNC lavalin corruption scandal.