National

Fighting A Blurred Line

Kerala Marxists find it tough to reconcile with the CPM's affinity to the Congress at the Centre

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Fighting A Blurred Line
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Amidst all the festivity of Onam, few may have noticed the election campaign stirring slowly to life around them. Shops are drawing large crowds, which polling booths may not.

The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) as also the BJP have found grist for their mill in the Kerala Marxists' embarrassment over the CPI(M)'s new-found camaraderie with the Congress at the Centre. Cadres of the Left Democratic Front (LDF), weaned on anti-Congress sentiment, are finding it difficult to reconcile with this dual policy of opposing the Congress in the state and cooperating with it at the Centre.

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It has also prompted BJP candidates to tell their audiences that voting for the LDF would amount to voting for the Congress at the Centre. Yet the poll rhetoric is unlikely to improve the party's fortunes in Kerala, where it is yet to open an account. Its chances though appear brighter in Thiruvananthapuram, where the Congress has fielded a debutant youth leader and where potential udf votes are expected to gravitate towards the nominee of the Janakeeya Munnani, a broadbased phalanx of Dalit and Other Backward Classes organisations.

Thiruvananthapuram voters are also sore with the Congress for relegating to the shelf their demands for upgrading the local airport and setting up a High Court bench in the state capital. This has reportedly prompted Congress sitting MP K. Karunakaran to shift his constituency to Mukundapuram where his face-off with the late Marxist patriarch E.M.S. Namboodiripad's son, E.M. Sreedharan, promises to be interesting. Unfortunately for him, Karunakaran has got off to a bad start in this constituency where the Christian vote is decisive. Local church leaders are unhappy that the Catholic sitting MP was shifted to accommodate him.

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Karunakaran has also flouted Congress president Sonia Gandhi's diktat against fielding two-time losers and got his son nominated for the Kozhikode seat. Not that it will help him, pitted as he is against Janata Dal nominee and former union civil aviation minister C.M. Ibrahim who hopes to benefit from a consolidation of the Muslim vote in this Muslim-dominated constituency.

The CPI(M)-led LDF thinks the minority vote will swing in their favour given the sense of insecurity among the minority communities and their lack of confidence in the Congress to protect their interests. Says party ideologue P. Govinda Pillai: "There will be a substantial erosion in the Muslim and Christian votes for the udf. They feel safer with the CPI(M) and its partners." But others argue that in the absence of a viable non-BJP, non-Congress front at the Centre, the minorities have no option but to fall back on the latter.

Muslim splinter groups such as Madhani's People's Democratic Front and Sulaiman Sait's Indian National League, which earlier polled a modest number of votes, have this time opted out of the fray in favour of the udf. This fact, coupled with the Indian Union Muslim League's hold in the Muslim-dominated Malappuram district, gives the udf better leverage in the community.

Both rival coalitions, which shared 10 seats each last time, have diligently followed the ground rules of selection-picking candidates by virtue of caste, community and religion. But both lack an emotive issue to engage the electorate with. Voter apathy is palpable; Vajpayee and Sonia can never command a cult following in Kerala and the videshi versus swadeshi debate does not evoke a dramatic response here.

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In addition, the CPI(M) faces the dilemma that haunts an incumbent government-spiralling prices, the problems of rubber planters and the sad state of the coconut and paddy sectors. But the party is going into the election with the knowledge that it is not likely to be a major player at the Centre. H.K.S. Surjeet's cordiality with the Congress is bad news for the Marxists here, spawning speculation that the Kerala unit may revolt against the national leadership. But, argues, Congress leader A.K. Antony: "If the CPI(M) here follows the Surjeet line, they'll will lose Kerala to the Congress. A split within the CPI(M) is inevitable after the poll."

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For the moment, however, the Congress and the CPI(M) are speaking in one voice declaring the BJP as their common enemy.

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