Madni ends alliance with Pinarai

PDP ends alliance with Left

PNS | Kollam

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of Islamist leader Abdul Nasser Madani has said that the support his party had declared for the CPI(M)-led LDF is not there anymore. The undeclared but open alliance with Madani’s party is seen as one of the main reasons for the humiliating defeats the LDF had suffered in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

“There has never been any formal alliance with the Left. It was a support on the basis of issues. But several Left leaders themselves had spoken against that cooperation afterwards and that situation meant the relation was not there anymore,” Madani told the media. Observers interpreted this as an indirect declaration of the withdrawal of PDP support for the LDF.

The Islamist leader told a television channel that his party would go it alone in the local bodies elections to be held in September. However, the position the party would be taking in the Assembly elections due in April next could not be announced now, he said. Madani claimed that some constituents of the ruling front and some leaders in the CPI(M) had failed to understand his party in the proper manner.

The CPI(M), especially its neo-liberalist faction led by secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, had stood firm in having an alliance with the PDP during the last Lok Sabha elections. The CPI(M) had shown the preparedness to even endanger its relations with the CPI to keep the alliance with Madani. Analyses of the Lok Sabha poll results had shown that a good section of Hindu supporters of the Left had voted against it due to this alliance.

The CPI and RSP, long-standing allies of the CPI(M), had openly objected to the alliance alleging that the PDP was a communal organization. Even Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan, the senior-most CPI(M) leader of Kerala, had registered his protest by saying that Madani was not yet out of the shadows of allegations (regarding extremist orientations). However, Pinarayi vijayan chose to keep the alliance and even shared a stage with Madani at an election rally in Ponnani.

With the PDP also withdrawing support, the Left’s isolation from the minorities has become almost total. The only Muslim outfit which still keeps company with the Left is the Sunni sect led by Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musliar but sources in that organization indicate that there are divergent opinions on the issue of continuing the support.

Muslim party Indian National League, which had supported the LDF since its formation in the aftermath of the Ayidhya episode, had severed ties with it last month, putting he entire blame for the decision on the hegemonic attitude of the CPI(M). The Jama’at-e-Islami, an outside ally for the past one decade, also abandoned the LDF last month.