CPM turns party paper into anti-VS campaign tool

The Deshabhimani newspaper, the Kerala CPI(M)’s organ, on Wednesday published on its first page the resolution adopted by a crucial central committee meeting on serious organizational issues. But if there are people who are generous enough to consider this unprecedented act as a sign of a glasnost taking place in the CPI(M), they are mistaken.

Analysts are viewing this act of the CPI(M) as part of a strategy formulated by the official neo-liberalist leadership headed by State party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan to ridicule and defeat its arch enemy, octogenarian Marxist revolutionary VS Achuthanandan, who is on an all-out war against it over its alleged right-wing deviations and fascist tendencies.

The resolution, adopted by the central committee at its Saturday-Sunday meeting, is a virtual chargesheet against Achuthanandan who has been demanding a leadership change in the State and relinquishment of the party’s policy of eliminating its enemies physically as seen in the case of the murder of rebel leader TP Chandrasekharan of Onchiyam.

Coming just three days after the crucial CC meeting and amidst a State committee meet in Thiruvananthapuram, the publishing of the resolution has surprised workers as well as CPI(M)-watchers because the party, still struggling to get out of the ‘iron curtain syndrome’, has never been in the habit of making public resolutions adopted over organizational matters.

Party workers and leaders loyal to Achuthanandan in the divisionism-ridden Kerala CPI(M) are already up in arms against the leadership’s act because they see it as a step taken with the goal of humiliating the octogenarian leader. They also say that there are points and explanations in the published resolution which the central committee had not even referred to.

According to the resolution, the central committee had criticized Achuthanandan harshly for his repeated attacks against the State leadership in the name of non-existent right wing tendencies while the actual action it took against him was a mere public censuring. It claimed that the central committee had asked Achuthanandan to own up his mistakes in the public.

Terming Achuthanandan’s current war as a continuation of his alleged divisionist agenda, the resolution said that there was no meaning in his claim that his criticisms were political and ideological.

Analysts point out that the neo-liberalist leadership was forced to publish the resolution as an instrument to openly ridicule Achuthanandan in the face of his increasing popularity in the party as well as outside. The act is also seen as a sign of the leadership’s inability to take on Achuthanandan during the fiery discussions within the party forums.

“This shows that the State party leadership is facing an unusual situation,” said Appukkuttan Vallikunnu, a former associate editor of Deshabhimani. “The crisis is so deep that the leadership has no other option but to make the resolution public. It is obvious that the neo-liberalist State leadership has the support of the central leadership in this,” he said.

It is interesting to note that the resolution came out in the paper when a majority of party workers as well as the media had been viewing the limiting of disciplinary action against Achuthanandan to a mere public censuring and the instruction of the CC to the Politbureau to probe the party’s alleged role in the Chandrasekharan murder as huge victory of the octogenarian leader.

“This shows that there would be no end to the war within the CPI(M) unless and until the official leadership allowed democratization of the party and relinquished its tendency to eliminate enemies physically,” said a former party theorist. “The resolution and its publishing in the party paper would only enrage VS more and aggravate the divisionist war,” he added.

 

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