LDF stuck in the midst of rhetoric, reality

The demand may be only a little less pressing in the event of a Vajpayee-led Government in Delhi for there seems to be no escape for the Congress and the CPM this time from some sort of floor coordination in Parliament.

Of course, thechange in power equations at the Centre will also have an impact on the West Bengal and Tripura units of the two parties. But in West Bengal at least, the Lok Sabha poll results have already laid the political ground for change in mutual perceptions. With Mamata Banerjee in alliance with a resurgent BJP emerging as the main threat to the CPM and the official Congress being reduced to a virtual rump, the process of adjustment there will be almost painless.

Even in Kerala, the task will not be as difficult as perceived in some quarters including a section of the CPM leadership. The Congress support for the UF government for 18 months and the tacit CPM backing for Rao’s minority government had not stopped the LDF or the UDF from criticising each other inside the State.

And even as they fought on diverse issues, Kerala Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the demolition of the Babri Masjid and asking for its reconstruction at the same site, perhaps the only Legislature to do so in the country.That this was due to the success of the rival fronts in isolating the BJP at the hustings and thus denying it a seat in the Assembly only reinforced their underlying unity.

It is also not as if the politically literate voters in the State had no inkling of a possible post-poll arrangement between the Congress and the CPM in the just concluded elections. In fact, for greater part of the campaign the two parties charged each other of directly or indirectly helping the BJP.

The BJP in turn sought votes mainly by pointing a finger at the contradiction between the rhetoric of the two parties and the reality of their relationship. It could not be an accident that Sonia did not even mention the LDF during her whirlwind tour of Kerala and K Karunakaran assiduously avoided any frontal attack on the CPM all through his campaign.

The CPM Central Committee’s endorsement of Surjeet’s line — it could well be the politburo line considering the general secretary could not have come in the open without consultationamong politburo members would only be formalising and publicly acknowledging an understanding that was there for all to see for quite some time.

In a way, such acknowledgment by way of ideological sanction would free the supporters of both fronts in the State from any nagging feeling of guilt or fear of heresy in candidly reworking their relationship.

While such honesty will certainly increase the public credibility of the two parties and their respective fronts, there is also a price to be paid. The Congress for instance will have to be constantly look over its shoulders for a Mamata in the making and sneaky CPM attempts to draw its powerful ally, the Muslim League into the LDF. It will also have to give up looking for easy political small change from the increasing CPM-BJP clashes in the State.

Haunting the CPM will be the spectre of the 1964 split in the undivided Communist Party. If it is what it is today in Kerala it is because it went along and built upon the deep-rooted anti-Congressism of itsrank and file that has refused to be chastened by the slow but steady growth of the BJP in the State. The easy way out for the party so far was to call the Congress and the BJP two sides of the same coin. If the Surjeet line prevails on Saturday it will have to discard once and for all such make believe.