Making it clear that there is no question of the Kerala CPI(M) accepting any proposal for a direct or indirect tie-up with the Congress at the national level, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and party State secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan have asserted that the CPI(M) will remain committed to fighting both the ‘violent communalism of the BJP’ and the ‘neo-liberalism of the Congress’.
While Mr. Vijayan, who inaugurated the Thrissur district conference of the CPI(M) at Thrissur on Tuesday, asserted that the Congress would have no place in the secular and democratic platform envisaged at the national level, Mr. Balakrishnan, who inaugurated the Wayanad district conference of the party, said the Congress was certainly not the alternative to the BJP and its allies.
“We have to form an alternative for neo-liberalisam and violent communalism. We need a unity of democratic and secular forces. The Congress has no place in such a platform,” Mr. Vijayan said.
Liberalisation policies
Mr. Vijayan wondered how the Congress be part of the fight against the BJP which was implementing the policies of globalisation and liberalisation policies initiated by the Congress. The Congress of today was not the one that used to be anti-imperialist in its policies and opposed to corruption.
People had drifted away from the Congress owing to its globalisation policies and corrupt deeds. The party had never admitted its mistakes. Nor had it given hints of any change in its policies. That being the case, there was no need for any change in the stand towards the Congress, Mr. Vijayan, who is also member of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau, said.
Echoing him, Mr. Balakrishnan said in Wayanad an alliance of political parties with similar views against communalism and neo-liberal economic policies alone could resist the growth of the BJP in the country. While the BJP pursued extreme Hindutva, the Congress resorted to soft Hindutva to counter it.
When the Congress was in power, it had failed to adopt a firm stand against the BJP’s communal agenda. Now that the BJP was in power, it was pursuing its own communal agenda and the neo-liberal economic policies launched by the Congress.
“It is not enough that the Congress has changed its president. It should change its core policies,” Mr. Balakrishnan said.
