Kerala’s local bodies elections are still a year away but the State CPI(M) has already started preparing for it out of the realisation that these polls are going to be crucial for its very survival as an influential party in the State and in the context of opinions being aired within the party that urgent measures are needed to avoid a West Bengal-like situation.
The party conferences in the State in preparation for the 21st Congress to be held in April next year at Vishakhapatnam are expected to discuss in detail the strategies to be adopted for facing the local bodies election. In that sense, the conferences at branch committee level, which started last Wednesday, are going to be crucial, according to party insiders.
Marxist theorists and poll strategists fear that the left, whose power share in the local bodies had plummeted from 65 percent to less than 35 percent in the 2010 election, could face even more serious setbacks in the next local bodies polls to be held in September-October, 2015 if correction measures are not taken up immediately.
What is troubling the Kerala CPI(M) mostly is the erosion in its support base in the grassroots level in the context of the growing popularity of the BJP in the State. It is felt that the party’s supporters among the middle and upper middle class Hindus are already showing a tendency to defect to the BJP, signs of which were seen in the 16th lok Sabha election.
Another important factor the party is worried about is the public perception of it with regard to the infamous political killings that had taken place recently. There is a strong section in the Kerala CPI(M) which feels that it is high time the so-called Kannur lobby of the party took steps to convince the people that it has abandoned the path of violent politics.
The CPI(M) has repeatedly claimed that it had no role in the murders of Marxist rebel TP Chandrasekharan of Onchiyam in Kozhikode on May 4, 2012 and RSS leader Manoj of Kathiroor Kannur on September 1 last but neither the general public nor the section in the party opposing the Kannur lobby seems to be prepared to accept this.
Though the main agenda of the four-month party conference process which started this week should be to devise strategies to regain the party’s lost influence among the general public with an eye on the local bodies polls next year and the Assembly election in 2016, even senior leaders are worried that it could get sidelined due to the power struggle happening within.
A competition is already on within the party for the post of State secretary as the present incumbent, Pinarayi Vijayan, will step down with the State conference as per the decision that secretaries who have served for three terms have to be replaced. On Friday, Pinarayi, who served as secretary for the past 16 years, said that he would step down with the State conference.
The fear among many senior leaders is that this competition – happening within the Kannur lobby of which Pinarayi is the supreme leader and in other sections as well – could overshadow the main agenda of the conferences. “Many expect the transition to be smooth but I am not all that confident,” said a former CPI(M) State committee member from Kannur.
It is said that opponents of Pinarayi will attack him in the conferences for leading the party to a helpless situation as far as taking up of people’s issues are concerned. Critics say that under Pinarayi’s leadership, the party has not succeeded in leading the Opposition lDF to even a single victory in its agitation against the Congress-led UDF Government since May, 2011.