CPM admits to wooing US capital

The Kerala CPI(M) on Tuesday confirmed the WikiLeaks disclosure that it had held talks with US diplomats when it was in power to woo private American firms to make capital investment in the State.

“But there is no need for anyone to have any anxieties. No foreign investment had come to Kerala in the five years (of LDF rule between 2006 and 2011),” CPI(M) central committee member and former Kerala finance minister Thomas Isaac, who was among the leaders who met the US officials three years back, said in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.

Isaac’s statement came in response to reports based on WikiLeaks revelations of cables (dated August, 2008) that Kerala Marxist leaders had met US diplomats at the party headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram. “There is nothing unusual about it,” Isaac said justifying the proletarian party leaders’ meeting with top officials of the capitalist country.

At the meeting, State CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, central committee member and then education minister MA Baby and Isaac, the leaders of the neo-liberalist faction in the party, had tried to convince the US officials about their openness to accepting capital investment in Kerala and that communists were not averse to private capital.

Baby had reportedly told the officials that VI Lenin’s economic principles had favoured private capital. Isaac had told the US team that Kerala was in need of American investment in the infrastructure sector and for the rapid development of the State. He even wanted the officials to ask representatives of US firms to meet him personally, according to WikiLeaks.

At the meeting held beneath the imposing portraits of Joseph Stalin and Lenin in his office in the AKG Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, Pinarayi is said to have told the US diplomats that the CPI(M) had no problem or hesitation in inviting American companies to invest in Kerala for its rapid development.

In order to assure the US team that the Marxists had given up the path of unjustifiable agitations, Pinarayi had even told them that the party had no role in the anti-Coca-Cola agitations in Palakkad district. He told them that the anti-Coke stir was strictly local and was staged by NGOs on environmental issues.

Reports quoting the WikiLeaks revelation of a diplomatic cable sent to the US State Department by a diplomat, Isaac had told the visiting American team that the Government in Kerala was unable to make substantial investments in the infrastructure sector and therefore it was welcoming private capital.

On Tuesday, Isaac told newsmen that it was a general misconception that the Marxists were totally against private capital. “We don’t have a position that there shouldn’t be private capital; at the same time we don’t hold that anything is all right in private capital investment. We are not against all kinds of foreign investment,” Isaac said.

“The new party programme clearly states that private capital investment can be allowed in select sectors even after the people’s democratic revolution. Such a move is in accordance with the development of new sectors like IT, nano-technology and biotechnology,” Isaac, an economics professor, said.

He said that there was nothing unusual in foreign diplomats and officials meeting political leaders and ministers in the State. “People from the US consulate and representatives of the European Union and even European countries used to visit ministers and political leaders and hold discussions,: he said, adding that the US consul also had met them.

However, former chief minister VS Achuthanandan, leader of the traditionalist faction in the CPI(M) and arch enemy of Pinarayi, said he did not think the WikiLeaks revelations were true. “There is no need to misinterpret the meeting (of party leaders with US officials),” he said in response to the latest revelations.

Achuthanandan said that the US officials had met him too. “”I told them that their position on Iraq was incorrect. I also told them that such a programme cannot be implemented in all places,” Achuthanandan, presently Opposition leader in the Kerala Assembly, said.

Responses