Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and CPI State secretary Kanam Rajendran locked horns over the question of allying with the Congress to take on the BJP and the Sangh Parivar here on Friday with Mr. Vijayan virtually snubbing the CPI leadership for its position that the Left can fight the BJP only by joining hands with the Congress.
“If the Left joins hands with the Congress, our fight against violent communal forces will lose its credibility,” Mr. Vijayan said while inaugurating a seminar on ‘Left: Expectations and Possibilities,’ held as part of the ongoing 23rd CPI State conference, without directly referring to the CPI leadership or its stance on the issue. Equally veiled was Mr. Rajendran retort.
“There’s nothing wrong in accepting the help of other parties to take on the main enemy,” he said, adding that the Left should not let down the people who had reposed faith in it. “India is not made up of Kerala alone,” he said.
The Chief Minister also spoke on the same vein, but to the opposite effect, indirectly warning the CPI that playing second fiddle to anyone would result in the Left losing faith reposed on it by the people. Communist politics would suffer if the Left chose the path of compromise, he said and added that there were many instances from across the world that went to prove this. The Left, he said, could not tie up with the Congress as the latter did not have credentials to win the people’s trust. Mr. Vijayan used a major part of his 30-minute speech to drive home the point that the Congress as a national party had failed in fighting communalism or glabalisation. “Congress has been trying to appease imperialist forces. It has been soft towards communal forces too,” he said. Transport Minister A.K. Saseendran, Ports Minister Kadannappally Ramachandran, and Janata Dal (United) leader M.P. Veerendrakumar spoke.
