CPM to go soft on Congress, the lesser evil

PALAKKAD, Jan 3: Indicating a softer approach to the Congress in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, CPM general secretary Harkishen Singh ...

PALAKKAD, Jan 3: Indicating a softer approach to the Congress in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, CPM general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet today said the Left forces must demarcate the crucial difference between the BJP — a communal force threatening national unity — and the Congress — a bourgeois party which has weakened itself through its communal compromises and rampant corruption.

Inaugurating the 16th State party conference here on Friday, Surjeet said the key policy of the United Front-Left Front would be to defeat the BJP at any cost even as refusing to have any alliance with the Congress.

However, he stressed it is imperative that even in places where the UF-LF are not strong enough, the main thrust must be to defeat the BJP, which gave sufficient hints that the Congress would no longer be anathema to the CPM outside its traditional strongholds.

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Surjeet said the question of whether the CPM should join the Government was not relevant now. It would be discussed and sorted out by the party at the appropriate time, he said. The CPM leader, a key figure in the UF set-up, spent a lot of time explaining the electoral strategy his party had pursued in the past few decades, referring to the important role the CPM and the left parties had come to play in national politics. He said the CPM had now acquired a dominant role in national politics where it could have a crucial influence in deciding the course of events.

However, it has not yet arrived at a juncture where it would be able to change the course, asserting the need for the party to strike tactical alliances with various other parties with a view to furthering its political objectives.“We must intervene as and when the occasion comes,” said Surjeet, stressing that the party’s policies must be tuned to increase this national role.He said the national politics was presenting three combinations now — one led by the UF-LF, the second the BJP and its allies and the third the Congress and its allies. He felt the fourth combination, proposed to be led by Laloo Prasad Yadav, was yet to take shape.His major attack was on the BJP, which he said, was a threat to national unity, a danger to a country with 20 per cent minorities population. He said the CPM would not allow a situation where the divisions and bloodshed of 1947 is repeated with the BJP in power.

Surjeet said the Congress’ hunger for power led to the present impasse. He said there was a mass exodus from the Congress to the BJP and they hope Sonia would turn the tides. But, it is the communal compromises indulged in by the Congress that led to the present plight, as people had lost any demarcation between the Congress and the BJP, he felt.