Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member S. Ramachandran Pillai inaugurated the reception committee office for the upcoming party congress on the Bank Road here on Tuesday.
Speaking on the occasion, he said that the party congress scheduled to be held in the city from April 4 to 9 would be a significant one discussing contemporary global and national issues. The deliberations would be held at the ideological level. He said he could not disclose the details of the draft of ideological and political resolutions at this stage. The Central Committee (CC) had once discussed the draft of the ideological resolution. Now final touches were being made. The CC would meet again in Kolkata next month in this regard.
The ideological and political resolutions would be published by January 23 to be discussed at all levels of the party. Even the detractors of the party could freely discuss these things. Further, the draft would be deliberated at the party congress.
Only at important junctures ideological resolutions are discussed. The 14th Party Congress had then discussed the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and socialism in East European countries in 1992, Mr. Pillai said.
He said that the collapse of the Soviet Union had given critics to vehemently come out against communism and socialism. Even today such tendencies persisted after capitalistic-driven economies failed to deliver.
The collapse of insurance companies and banking sector, rise in unemployment and poverty and the yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots revealed that capitalism had failed. However, capitalistic countries continued to unleash their powers on smaller nations, he said.
Now the ongoing protests witnessed in Wall Street had spread to other cities in the United States. The protest of people had brought in a new political dimension in many Latin American countries. Progressive democratic communist governments began to replace corrupt capitalistic regimes.
The Arab world was seeing such a rage with people taking to the street for democratic system of governance. But the Arab world was itself complex. Different countries had different demands. The situations were also different. But the U.S. was trying to impose its military might. Religious fundamentalists were also trying to exploit the situation, Mr. Pillai said.
In India, he said, the Left parties had once tied up with regional parties for a third alternative to the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. However, these regional parties took an opportunistic stand derailing the concept of a third alternative.
The support given by the Left parties to the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre from 2004 to 2008 had given a wider acceptance to the Congress. It also bolstered the secular image of the Congress among the minorities, he said.
Elamaram Karim, MLA, Mayor A.K. Premajam, CPI (M) district secretary T.P. Ramakrishnan, former Mayor M. Bhaskaran, novelist P. Valsala, and environmentalist A. Achuthyan were present.
