Cong tries to split Kerala left

Kerala’s Congress party, which has been successful in bringing the RSP and a section of the Janata Dal (S) from the left camp into the UDF it is leading in recent past, has launched a bid to split the CPI(M)-led Opposition lDF further. The party’s Malayalam mouthpiece, Veekshanam daily, on Thursday asked the CPI to jump the left’s ‘sinking ship’ and join the ruling UDF in the context of the defeat of the lDF in the Aruvikkara Assembly by-election.

State Home Minister and former PCC president Ramesh Chennithala confirmed that the party shared the sentiment behind the daily’s editorial. “The UDF will welcome left parties into it if they can relinquish their blind enmity towards the Congress,” Chennithala said. However, CPI leaders rejected the invitation and the CPI(M) termed the proposal as “ridiculous”.

Muslim league, the second biggest constituent of the UDF, had recently made statements effectively inviting the CPI to join the ruling front. The Congress's bid is to intensify discussions in this direction in the context of the UDF victory in Aruvikkara by-election. Analysts are of the opinion that it would be foolish to conclude at this stage that the UDF bid would be futile.

Stating that the lDF and the CPI(M) have weakened so much that they cannot win elections in the future and that their efforts would henceforth be not to win polls but to maintain second position, the paper’s editorial says, “The CPI, which has not undergone the kind of decadence that the CPI(M) has, should save itself from the left camp which is facing a shipwreck.”

In a strategy to tempt the CPI further, the editorial says, “CPI men, who are not in the habit of being as arrogant as the CPI(M) leaders are people who keep nostalgic memories of being in the State administration as part of a Congress-led front for a decade from 1969. The CPI cannot forget those times when they had enjoyed a fair coalition culture.”

The Congress had then allowed CPI’s late leaders C Achutha Menon and PK Vasudevan Nair to become Chief Ministers though that party was inferior to it in legislator strength. The paper reminds the CPI that it had gone out of the coalition to join hands with the CPI(M) by abandoning such a proud tradition.

Pointing out that CPI(M) as leader of the lDF had not given the consideration it deserved, the Veekshanam editorial states that the left front has merely been a shortcut for capturing power as far as the Marxists are concerned. The Marxists have already relinquished the principles of democracy and leftist ideals through its anti-communist political activities.

“The CPI will have to come out of the blemished association with the CPI(M) if it really wants to protect its pure leftist ideals, pro-poor sentiments and secular principles… If the RSP could return (to the Congress-led coalition) with its nostalgic memories, why can't the CPI do thatIJ” asks the paper's editorial. The RSP had left the lDF and joined the UDF in March, 2014.

Rejecting Vekshanam’s call, CPI’s assistant State secretary Sathyan Mokeri said, “We are engaged in a fierce battle against the economic policies initiated by the former Congress-led UPA Government. We will never be part of any formation which is diametrically opposite to the spirit of that battle.”

CPI(M)’s Politburo member and former State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, who had taken much of the blame for the departure from the lDF of the RSP and a section of the JD(S) from the lDF, reacted acerbically to Veekshanam’s proposal by terming it as “ridiculous” and as something which “sprouted from the imagination of some journalist who failed to understand reality”.