The temporary truce entered into by the warring factions in the CPI(M) leadership might have been able to avert the imminent confrontation at the highest level, but indications are that it won’t be enough to stop the blame game from gaining momentum at the party’s West Bengal unit. Following the Left Front’s first setback in the state since 1977, West Bengal leaders squarely blamed the leadership of CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat.
Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had even defied the leadership by skipping the party’s recent politburo meeting in New Delhi. CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose pointed fingers at the party’s central leaders saying that the effort to form the Third Front did not go well with the voters in the recent general elections. But they, in turn, had to face criticism from their own comrades for the poor performance in the state.
Similar things happened in another Left-ruled state — Kerala — where party secretary P Vijayan awaiting the result before he could sack Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan. But yesterday’ politburo statement indicates that nothing like that was happening now. It seems the warring factions have agreed to share their part of the blame thus creating equilibrium in the party leadership. The politburo statement says: “There should be a serious examination of the reasons for the reverses. Both national and state-specific factors are responsible for the poor performance.”
But that won’t neutralise the pressure building within the party’s West Bengal unit for a change of guard. On May 24, the CPI(M) state committee will meet to review its poll performance in the state.
Political experts feel the CPI(M) in Bengal has hardly any time to reorganise itself for the serious challenges it may face in the coming days. Speculations in the local media even named the speaker of the state Assembly, Hasim Abdul Halim, as the possible new leader in place of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. But Rezzak Molla, a senior minister of the state government and a member of the CPI(M) state committee and a strong critic of Buddhadeb-Biman, does not agree. He feels, “We don’t have anybody to replace them. There is no alternative available to us.” He, however, says there is a serious need to “reshuffle in the leaderships of both the party and the government”. According to Molla, the result of the Lok Sabha elections was a clear verdict against the Left in Bengal. The Assembly-wise break-up of the result shows that almost 183 Assembly seats were lost by the Left.
Tarit Topdar, another CPI(M) state committee member who lost the Barrackpore seat this time, points out poor governance and rampant corruption as causes for their debacle. “Corruption is a disease which is not restricted to the grassroots level anymore. It has now gone up. The Writers Buildings and the PC office (the party headquarters) are also not free from it.”
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On June 29, the Left parties will face another elections when 19 municipalities will go to polls. Next year around the same time, another 81 municipalities will go to polls, including Kolkata Coporation. In between, there will be by-elections in some Assembly seats. Before that the party needs to take “corrective steps” to revive itself. Topdar feels it should be done immediately. But Molla sees no hope. “We have entered a blind alley. I don’t see any way out from it.”
A man from rural Bengal, who has been alerting in vain his party and the government for the last two years about the negative impact of the land acquisition efforts among the poor farmers, angrily commented, “The party has been hijacked by other people. Earlier, the party’s main support planks were peasants, workers, poor people and the middle-class. The workers, peasants and the poor have left us. Now only the middle-class has remained with us. That too, the upper crust of the middle class.”