THIRUVANANTHPAURAM: Senior CPI leader C. Divakaran has said there is dearth of leaders with the style of functioning of communist stalwarts like V.S. Achuthanandan, Veliyam Bhargavan and C.K. Chandrappan.
He said there was a feeling among the people, especially the fellow travelers and sympathisers of the Left parties that the current leaders are not following the style of functioning of popular leaders of the Left movement.
The humongous defeat in Lok Sabha polls should serve as a lesson for the Left parties and they need to learn from the mistakes to win back support, he said in an interview to a regional news channel.
On asked about the acceptance of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the CPI leader said he is liked by party workers. But the leadership of the two parties will have to reach out to the people outside party organisation in a big way. "This is a major issue that is bothering the Left parties at the moment. We cannot win polls just on the strength of our party workers. People outside the party or who are not party members, also strongly believe that they have a stake in the organisation. Therefore collective efforts are required from both the parties to win back the people who got alienated from the Left in the last elections," Mr Divakaran said.
Mr Divakaran said the defeat in Thiruvananthauram constituency came as a shocker for him. "I could not secure the support of even one-fourth of the people whom I expected to back me. I could not come to terms with the defeat for days. So I joined my son in Dubai for a change," he said.
Soon after the defeat, the CPI leader had called for frank assessment of the results at different levels. The Left leaders need to go down to the people instead of clinging to protocol, he stated.
Mr Divakaran had pointed out that the Left had experienced such a big defeat for the first time in the state and this required to be examined in depth. According to him there was an organised move to defeat the LDF in the state in the recent polls.
The CPI leader said the Left failed to read the pulse of the people. "We could not foresee the debacle. In my experience we still have a long way to go to understand what people want," he pointed out.
