UPA's survival will now depend on outside support: CPI-M

Sitaram Yechury says outside support is managed for the survival of the government either through enticements or threats

The political excitement over new alliances and coalitions a year before the scheduled general elections is a result of the "growing uncertainty" of the UPA government that has been reduced to a minority, the CPI(M) said today.

Though there was nothing unusual in the talk of new alliances and excitement over it in the run-up to general elections, it said with nearly a year left for the 2014 elections, "such excitement seems to have begun early mainly due to the growing uncertainty of the UPA-II alliance."

"This government was already reduced to a minority when the Trinamool Congress withdrew support. With the DMK now doing so, it has been reduced to a further minority government. Its survival will now increasingly depend on the outside support that it garners from the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party," senior party leader Sitaram Yechury said in an editorial in the latest 'People's Democracy'.

He said it was now "amply clear that such outside support is managed for the survival of the government either through enticements or threats".

Observing that the SP has started talking about a 'third front' despite continuing to support the UPA-II coalition, Yechury said this was due to pressures from its own political base over issues like price rise and agrarian distress.

"The reason why parties like the SP, that continue to bail out this UPA government, talk in terms of a third front is precisely because there is pressure from its own political and social base for a change that will provide people some relief from their present miserable conditions of existence."

Maintaining that the economic slowdown, relentless price and deepening agrarian distress were "all combining to mount unprecedented agonies on the people", he said, "The people's cries for relief and a better livelihood find such political expressions of a 'third front' government."

Hence, "the cost of such enticements to garner support for any vote in Parliament will also rise", Yechury said.

"The much-needed relief which the people are hoping will not come merely from a non-Congress non-BJP government. Relief can only come through alternate policies. What the people require, therefore, is not merely an alternate government but a government that can implement an alternate pro-people policy direction," he said.