Kerala - Kannur   

Third Front for secular government: Karat

KANNUR: Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat has said that only a non-Congress and non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) combination can guarantee a secular government at the Centre.

At an election rally of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) here on Friday, Mr. Karat said the Lok Sabha election was going to be significant because of the three-way contest. Eleven years of BJP and Congress governments had led people to believe that there were only two choices. Both parties together had garnered only 48.6 per cent of the votes, while the others secured over 50 per cent.

He said the two parties were losing ground. The experiences over the past five years had shown that the Congress had failed to live up to its commitment to the Common Minimum Programme as it tried to pursue policies in favour of foreign finance capital. As a result of these policies, the division between the rich and the poor was growing. While the country had the largest number of billionaires, it had the largest number of hungry and illiterate people.

He said the Indian economy was insulated against the impact of the global capitalist crisis because of the determined struggle of the Left against the reform policies of the UPA government that wanted to introduce legislation to allow foreign banks to buy Indian banks and privatise the insurance sector. The Congress should be honest and admit that the Left had saved the economy from collapse.

He said the BJP had not opposed the reform policies of the UPA government. The UPA government had failed to tackle the agrarian crisis. The Congress manifesto was silent about the problem of loss of jobs in the wake of the capitalist crisis. It was the Left Democratic Front government that had announced a welfare scheme for non-resident Indians facing job loss. The UPA government had also failed to tackle price rise. It had weakened the Public Distribution System. In Kerala alone, there was a 73 per cent cut in rice allocation.

Mr. Karat said the 10-year military collaboration of India with the U.S. had reduced the country to the status of Pakistan. The country could not pursue an independent foreign policy because of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, he said adding that the Congress was now not speaking about the deal because it had been exposed in the wake of the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s disclosure that the country had enough uranium to generate 20,000 MW of electricity.

Referring to the Congress’ charge that the third alternative was to help the BJP, Mr. Karat said it was the Congress that had joined the BJP to pull down the V.P. Singh government. Today, the BJP had suffered a severe setback as its allies joined the third alternative. The Congress had at every critical juncture compromised, he said, adding that a Congress government at Uttar Pradesh would not have arrested Varun Gandhi for his hate speech.

Referring to Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s remark that the third alternative was an illusion, Mr. Karat said the UPA existed only in name. The Congress should look after its own affairs. The four Left parties and six regional parties had come together to form an alternative to pursue alternative policies based on pro-people economic initiatives, secularism, an independent foreign policy and social justice.

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