Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

CPI(M) bows to people's wish

C. Gouridasan Nair

Historic reversal of Polit Bureau decision

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In deciding to field Leader of the Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan in the coming Assembly election, the CPI(M) Polit Bureau has bowed to the voice of the voiceless within and outside the CPI(M).

The Polit Bureau decision, historic both for the manner in which it was arrived at and the way it responds to the massive outpouring of public support for Mr. Achuthanandan's candidature in Kerala and elsewhere, was communicated to the CPI(M) State secretariat and committee by party general secretary Prakash Karat, endorsed by both and announced by Mr. Karat at a news conference here late Friday evening.

This is the first time that the CPI(M) Polit Bureau has revisited the question as to whom the party should pick to head an Assembly election campaign in Kerala and it has done so in the wake of widespread disapproval of the earlier decision to keep ``the veteran of many a battles for the poor'' out of the fray.

The CPI(M) leadership's decision is also an emphatic message to both the party cadres and the masses that the party would stand firm in fighting for the genuine causes of the people and would not be averse to looking at its own internal working and decisions to respond to popular aspirations. Mr. Achuthanandan, who has never hesitated to take up issues that are unpalatable to the power elite straddling the political spectrum, has time and again proved that he is indomitable when it comes to fighting for just causes, be it out there in the forest tracts of Mathikettan or the dust tracks of Plachimada or when C.K. Janu gets beaten up by the police and victims of sexual harassment wilt under the oppressive weight of a system dominated by the rich and the powerful.

Rectification of error

On the face of it, this is only a rectification of an error committed by the CPI(M) leadership, but with this one decision, the leadership may well have salvaged the party and the LDF from brink of certain defeat in the Assembly election. It is also notable for the decisive manner in which the CPI(M) Polit Bureau has intervened in the affairs of the Kerala party.

There were many who had faulted the CPI(M) Polit Bureau for the unseemly controversy that had erupted when it chose to ignore Mr. Achuthanandan's claims to lead the LDF in the Assembly poll. The Polit Bureau had done so accepting the argument of the dominant section in the State party leadership that Mr. Achuthanandan is unpopular among the people as he was `anti-development and anti-minority'. But the reaction from the rank and file, unprecedented in the history of the CPI(M) in Kerala or elsewhere, was an eye-opener for the party leadership.

The stand of nine out of 14 district committees in favour of Mr. Achuthanandan's candidature also tilted the balance decisively in his favour. The reaction of the people and the lower level committees had contributed heavily to the Polit Bureau decision to revisit the issue and decide to field him. The decision in his favour came about as a result of the deliberations at the Polit Bureau meeting on March 21 and the consultations that Mr. Karat apparently had later with the former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, his successor Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Biman Basu and Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, who were not present at the Polit Bureau meeting.

The 84-year-old veteran has an onerous task on his shoulders. From the heights to which it had risen at the beginning of this year, the LDF has sunk to levels where it is widely perceived as having lost out to the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF). That the decision to field him has been taken in the face of stiff resistance from the dominant section in the State leadership should be a matter of concern for him and the rest of the LDF leadership. His task is to allay the fears of his colleagues and take everybody onboard in the LDF's bid to make a comeback in the electoral battle.

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