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| CPI(M) to meet for 'course correction' |
| Saubhadro Chatterji / New Delhi Jun 17, 2009, 00:39 IST |
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Amid a host of complaints from the various state units of the party, the CPI(M) Central Committee (CC) is set to meet for urgent “course correction” in its first meeting after the party’s debacle in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The CC meeting is slated on June 20 and 21. A politburo meeting will be held on June 19.
A large section of the party feels the Third Front experiment needs to be reviewed; and the CPI(M) needs to do away with the “cut and paste” style of forging hurried alliances just before the elections. It has also realised the need to renew its base among the Muslims after an analysis of the election result showed that voters from the minority communities dumped the party in key states of Kerala and West Bengal.
Although the party will remain committed to class struggle, the organisation and its governments in West Bengal and Kerala will be asked to address some “legitimate democratic aspirations” of the minorities and take “pro-people” steps, said a Central Committee member.
If the rebel group led by a section of the Bengal lobby manages to endorse that withdrawal of support from the first UPA government over the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal was a “wrong decision”, it will be party General Secretary Prakash Karat’s first political defeat in the party. Incidentally, this was the first Lok Sabha election during Karat’s leadership in the CPI(M).
The clamour for course correction of the political line is also significant because the Party Congress — which meets every three years — decides the party line for the next three years. In 2008, the Party Congress endorsed the current political stand.
After a series of state unit meetings, the Karat-led central leadership is facing questions on its key political decision of withdrawing support to the previous UPA government. “This line has failed miserably,” a top CPI(M) leader admitted to Business Standard, adding “questions were raised on the justification of this political line.
We could not stop the deal; we couldn’t topple the government. The Manmohan Singh government survived and carried forward its agenda but the Left was left behind.”
Many leaders in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have also slammed Karat and company for withdrawing support to the Congress-led coalition on the grounds of secularism. “The first UPA government was the first secular coalition government that completed the full five-year term. And we withdrew support from it!” said a senior leader from Bengal. Admitting that the move had not gone down well among the minority community, another Central Committee member pointed out that since the time of the VP Singh government, all secular coalition governments in Delhi were formed with the help of the CPI(M) but this was the first time when the party tried to do the opposite — topple a secular government.
Central Committee member Nilotpal Basu, however, did not agree with this theory of eroding Muslim votes. “In Muslim-dominated districts like Malda, Murshidabad and North Dinajpur in Bengal, our loss is less than the average vote loss of the state.”
Party units in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu also bear a grudge against the party’s central leadership for ignoring their objections and jumping into alliances with TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu and AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa in their respective states. “Our report said it would not be a right move to join Jayalalithaa as she was not in a position to oust the DMK. But others didn’t listen to us,” said a senior CPI(M) leader from Tamil Nadu.
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