THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: There are only sketchy reports on what transpired at the CPM central committee in New Delhi on March 1 but Opposition leader V S Achuthanandan has returned a man possessed, negating his more-than-a-decade-long campaign against the official leadership.
Grassroots party workers and outsiders, who had stood by Mr Achuthanandan in his campaign, be it atrocities against women, graft, CPM’s big Brother attitude and, of late, the killing of dissident CPM leader Chandrasekharan murder, feel orphaned. It’s as if the General has deserted the battlefield midway.
The General's own foot-soldiers rue the desertion and would rather wreak vengeance by backing the rival camp than preferring NOTA. The whys and wherefores of his change of stand will be debated well after the elections but for now, he has lent the ammo for poll debates.
Mr Achuthanandan has been reasoning out with aides that the party is down in the dumps and he cannot be part of the funeral. He needs to raise the party’s Lok Sabha tally. But aides counter the logic: “Rising to the defence of the party at the cost of one’s credibility?”
Mr Achuthanandan, though marginalized within the party, had used the extra-party forum of the Opposition leader to carry on his fight against CPM bosses. When the party denied him an Assembly ticket in 2006, crowds on the streets wangled one from the politburo and lofted him to power. In 2011, sworn foes in the party flaunted his images to canvass votes.
Now, it’s as if when the fight nears culmination and voters again ready to administer a corrective through the ballot, the leader has abdicated. Mr Achuthanandan had gone to the CC meeting on March 1 with a note demanding the expulsion of all party leaders convicted of the Chandrasekharan assassination. Mr Achuthanadan now parrots the party refrain that it was the UDF Government that ignored Intelligence warnings, leading to the killing of T P Chandrasekharan. Instead of a CBI probe, he is pleased with the single expulsion on the basis of probe the party hides from public.
Ms K K Rema, the widow of Chandrasekharan, says “VS will soon have to correct his stand if he has conscience”. One theory is age is against Mr Achuthanandan and he would rather be with the party in his sunset years. He’ll lose the fan club outside CPM but, like all Communists, he will get a red salute when he takes the bow.
Or is he rearing for one last tactical push from within, using a probable lacklustre LDF show in the polls against UDF, weighed down by double anti-incumbency of governance in Kerala and at the Centre.
But that seems unlikely. He had convinced the party that the people are with him, as in the Assembly polls in 2006 and 2011. He did this more resoundingly in 2009 LS polls when he left the LDF to fend for itself when it ended up with four out of the total 20 LS seats.
