Madani turns Left meet into PDP event

Kerala CPI(M) secretary
Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday completed the baptism of Islamist Abdul
Nasser Madani and his PDP into the Left by sharing the dais of an LDF
election convention in the Muslim-majority Ponnani Lok Sabha
constituency in Malappuram district.

Pinarayi threw all
objections from the party, Left front constituents and the general
public to the formalisation of an open CPI(M) alliance with PDP to the
winds by declaring at Ponnani that Madani was an anti-terror crusader.
“He has traveled all over Kerala spreading the message against
religious terrorism,” Pinarayi said.

The CPI(M)’s act of hosting
a programme which, in effect, was designed to formally sanctify the
Marxist-Madani political alliance, came within hours of CPI country
chief AB Bardhan’s statement in Delhi that the PDP was indeed a
communal outfit. “Don’t scare us with statements like ‘here comes the
communalist, here comes the terrorist.’ Madani is no terrorist. We do
not need anybody’s certificate for that,” Pinarayi said in a direct
reply to the CPI.

The CPI(M) State secretary had on Friday
kickstarted the exercise of baptizing Madani and his outfit by allowing
PDP working chairman Poonthura Siraj to abuse RSP national general
secretary TJ Chandrachoodan for terming PDP as a communal organization
at a convention in Attingal, Thiruvananthapuram. At that convention,
leaders of LDF partner RSP were pushed to the back row while Siraj sat
in the front row with Pinarayti, hogging the limelight.

However,
several older Marxist leaders admitted that the Ponnani convention with
Madani sitting next to Pinarayi was a big tragedy for the party.
Pinarayi inaugurated the convention with a more than 60-minute speech,
but when Madani spoke afterwards, the LDF convention virtually turned
into a PDP conference.

“I could not stand the sight. I think
what has happened is the reverse of what Pinarayi was intending to gain
with this alliance. What I felt was that the CPI(M) had fallen into
levels so low that the PDP was controlling it,” said an senior CPI(M)
leader, who was a former State committee member.

Going back once
again to his technique of using a carefully modulated voice and
calculated tone designed to take the Muslim crowds into his hands,
Madani spoke of the dangers of imperialism, his pains in the prison in
Coimbatore, the efforts of the UDF leaders including Muslim League
functionaries to get his support in the 2001 election.

However,
he started his speech by showering praises on Pinarayi, obviously for
his boldness to accept the PDP as a great friend rejecting the front
constituents’ protests. He promised not to let Pinarayi down by
pledging to end his public life if any authorities ever succeeded in
proving that he had terror connections.

Madani ridiculed the
Congress and its ally Muslim League for calling him a terror man now.
“When I was in the prison, UDF leaders from Kerala had made long
marches to Coimbatore to seek my support in election. They had waited
for hours on end to meet me in the prison. I will provide evidence to
prove that they had approached me with request for support even in this
election,” he said.

Reminding the speeches during his formative
days in the ISS and in the PDP after that, Madani addressed the entire
crowd of LDF supporters and those on the dais including several CPI(M)
heavyweights as “my children.”

The convention was organized in
Ponnani constituency to launch the electioneering for LDF Independent
candidate Hussein Randathani, whose candidature was reportedly proposed
by Madani and readily endorsed by the Marxist party. This had led to
several days of standoff between the CPI(M) and the CPI, to which the
LDF had allocated the Ponnani seat.

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