The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will have nothing to do with the “third or fourth front,” Yogendra Yadav, chief election strategist and political affairs committee member, said here on Wednesday.
Talking to The Hindu on the evolving non-Congress, non-BJP bloc, he said, “This is one of the usual, predictable and boring routine that happens in the run-up to every general election sometimes as third and sometimes as the fourth front. The fact is that it simply does not enthuse people because it comes across as being there to somehow come into government.”
“Today, the Congress represents the establishment and the BJP a substitute from within the establishment. We need an alternative to the establishment and its substitute and the third front (that is being formed) is not the alternative,” the AAP leader said.
“In the last three decades, we have witnessed an expansion of the third space in Indian politics, but the third front in its various avatars does not appear to be the legitimate occupier of this third space.”
The AAP’s strategy, Mr. Yadav said, is to bypass these efforts and appeal directly to the constituency of the third space. At the national level, the AAP seeks to challenge the BJP as a contender for alternative national issues and as an alternative political force.
“Our starting point, no doubt, is much behind the BJP. Still, that is how we did it in Delhi. I am not saying that Delhi can be replicated all over, but in some parts of the country it can be,” he said.
Referring to the electoral understanding between the AIADMK and the CPI(M) and the CPI in Tamil Nadu, the psephologist said: “When Communists come together with the AIADMK it does not look like a national effort at clean politics. It only goes on to damage the reputation the Left still enjoys in a section of the population. When Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh talks of being in the Prime Minister’s race, it appears like a mad and blind race for becoming the Prime Minister with no ethical content to it.”
