When the Chicken Came Home to Roost: Electoral Defeat for LDF and its Implications

NOW THAT the LDF in Kerala and the left forces all over India, except in Tripura, had to face one of the severest electoral setbacks in recent history, parties and concerned citizens and political pundits are busy discussing what went wrong. There are mutual recriminations and blame games, which unfortunately do not throw much light on why such a defeat and whether it was inevitable.

The politburo of the CPM, the other day, came out with a statement which said its election-eve move for a third front was not accepted by the people, indeed it was seen as a non-starter. But a serious and more nuanced self-critical assessment would have to be made and it should come only after the meetings of the central committee and the various state units of CPM including that of West Bengal and Kerala.

But the situation in Kerala was more or less evident to any independent and impartial observers and if you check my earlier posts here, you would see that I had explained the strategy of CPM in Kerala was proving to be a big failure, and that their moves to cut into Muslim votes were actually working against their interests, helping only to consolidate minority votes in the state.

Now the question is, whether these electoral moves launched by the official group in Kerala CPM, in spite of reservations within the party and the left front, were such an innocuous effort or was it part of a long-term agenda?

I think so. They were not done in good faith. There was a hidden agenda behind them and it simply failed, or was defeated by party ranks themselves. That seems to be the truth.

Here are my main points:

1. Why did Madani and Raman Pillai got the special attention from official left as they did this time? Was it an aberration or the manifestation of a process of transition in left politics or was it part of a strategy that would mean a major change in left politics as we have seen in the past?

2. It would appear that the calls for widening the mass base of the left forces, in Kerala, were made with a clear agenda. It would mean the sidelining of the traditional left parties, which some people have been describing as bereft of mass base any longer, and bring in new forces in their stead. Hence what we have seen in Kerala is a deliberate attempt to demolish the 30- year old LDF and build a new dispensation.

3. Who are the new forces to take their place in the new front envisaged by the official left? Think back to the 2006 Assembly poll and you will know who they are:
They are mainly the disgruntled elements at odds with the UDF like K Muralidharan and his DIC (now NCP), fortune-seekers like Madani and Raman Pillai, and the retrograde and compromised people like Kanthapruam. If possible they would have been happy to bring in godmen and women like Amritananda Mayi as we saw left ministers making a beeline there.

4. Why they are special and useful? First, they are career politicians who would not nitpick on policy. A decent agreement on sharing of spoils would keep them happy. Karunakaran was the best example of this line in politics. He was successful for three decades this way.

5. The CPM has undergone deep internal transition by way of its cadres and class basis. It is no longer a working class party. The new middle class leadership want to implement their new line of politics that would benefit their class, and they find better models in the right-wing, like Karunakaran, and this time made an effort to practice it here. With disastrous results, as we can all see. Now I hope the Governor would allow the law to take its own course and CBI would go ahead with the SNC Lavalin case and show the left leaders how democracy works (at least outside Kannur.)