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Tenuous Unity
Although
the CPI(M) manages to avert a split in the party at the Kannur meet, it
realises that much remains to be done. India Today Principal Correspondent
M.G. Radhakrishnan explains why.
It was quite
an arduous task for the four Politburo members who flew down from Delhi
to attend the CPI(M)'s four-day 17th state conference at Kannur last week.
Despite his advancing age, general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet actively
participated in the series of secret parleys along with colleagues Prakash
Karat, Sitaram Yechuri and P. Ramachandran, besides local Politburo representatives.
The meetings invariably stretched till the early
hours of the morning. But at the end of it all, the effort was worth its
while. At least, that's what the CPI(M) central leadership believes.
From plain persuasion to issuing threats, the party's fire-fighting team
used all the tricks in the trade to avert the much-expected factional
showdown at the state conference. For the first time in the past decade,
elections had been avoided in the selection of the 80-member state committee.
A truce was effected and the members decided upon "unanimously".
A grateful Pinarayi Vijayan, who was unanimously chosen for the second
time as the state secretary, made it a point in his valedictory speech
to thank the Politburo for the "smooth conduct" of the meet.
Given the bitter hostilities between the various factions which were in
full display at the district level elections just a few days earlier,
it was no mean achievement.
While that was the upside, skeptics in the party wondered just how long
the "facade of unity" would last. There was also the issue of
the CPI(M) continuing with the same leadership which led the party to
one of its worst electoral debacles in last May's assembly polls. "Averting
elections in the name of outdated notions like democratic centralism hardly
looks healthy today," one leader remarked. "There should have
been a change in the
leadership with the induction of you priority was to cement the
split among the cadres. Even in its analysis of the assembly poll defeat,
it had noted that the damage inflicted by factionalism had not yet been
healed and that the party had to go all out to forge unity.
At the end of the Kannur meet, Opposition leader V.S. Achuthanandan, although
much weakened from his unassailable position four years ago at Palakkad,
continued to hold most of the reins in the party. The meet had decided
to fully retain the state committee which was elected at the Palakkad
conference at which VS had decimated his rival camp led by the Centre
of Indian Trade Union (CITU). Only three new faces were inducted to the
committee of whom two belonged to the VS camp and the third was from the
latest faction led by Vijayan. The filling of two slots was left pending
after VS vehemently opposed the induction of two members from the CITU
camp.
All this notwithstanding, the VS faction had lost its dominance after
the emergence of the Malabar camp led by Vijayan and former chief minister
E.K. Nayanar. Earlier these leaders had lent VS full support in his successful
run against the CITU group. However they continue to be closer to VS than
the CITU camp which has ensured the former's reasonable success this time
too. In all earlier three state conferences, the state committee had to
be elected after the official panel of candidates were challenged by committees
presented by the rival camps.
Another major developement this time round was the unusually candid press
briefings given by the party spokesman. Although the CPI(M) continued
to berate the "bourgeois" media for "exaggerating the differences"
in the party, spokesman Kodiyeri Balakrishnan admitted that one serious
issue debated by the 500-odd delegates was the continuing factionalism.
"It is not
present on the scale of the past. But it is alive in some districts,"
he said. What he was referring to was the drubbing VS got in his native
Alappuzha district where the CITU camp saw to it that not a single member
from his camp was revealed why he was so candid. "Even if we don't
tell you these things, next day it will be all over the media. So better
be forthright and frank," he remarked.
The meet also discussed threadbare the other failures of the party. It
officially admitted to the financial bunglings of the last Left Democratic
Front which led to its electoral debacle. Equally significant was the
party's stagnant electoral performance despite the increase in membership
(from 2.60 lakh four years ago to 3.01 lakh now), continuing failure to
grow among the minority communities, low growth of women membership (8
per cent of the total), failure to raise gender and tribal issues, the
ineffective, ritual-like agitations it held against the "anti-people"
A.K. Antony-led government amd so on. In the face of these many issues,
the central leadership felt that a united front would help strengthen
the party. But with that unity being a tenuous one, it now knows that
will have to think up more ways to keep the different factions together.
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