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The emerging political scenario and the Left game-plan |
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B. I. Saini
The cat is out of the bag. Jyoti Basu’s remark at the beginning of the new year about what he called the necessity for building up a third front or third alternative shows that the Left parties are now looking at a scenario without the Congress at the head of the government. Speaking in Kolkata, the veteran CPI(M) leader admitted that it is not clear at present what shape the third alternative will take. But he was in no doubt that there was no alternative to a third alternative in the scenario emerging in the country.
Jyoti Basu’s remarks are especially significant as all along, he had been in favour of continuing Left support to the Congress to keep the United Progressive Alliance, UPA, government in power at the Centre, even when many of his colleagues in the CPI(M) and the other Left parties wanted to ditch the ruling coalition because of differing perspectives on economic and foreign policy issues.
CPI(M)’s new line on the third front comes at a time when the Congress, the leading light of the UPA, is on the back-foot because of a series of electoral reverses. Last month’s defeats in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh follow debacles earlier last year in Punjab and Uttarakhand. The BJP, after its victories in several states, especially Gujarat, where it overcame the anti-incumbency factor, is in a resurgent frame of mind, and is going all out to devise a winning strategy for the Lok Sabha elections due by May next year. To steal a march over the Congress, the party has already chosen senior leader and former Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani as its prime ministerial candidate in the next general elections.
The Left assessment clearly is that the Congress is facing a strong anti-incumbency wave and it wants no share in that whenever the next elections are held. It has no intention to go down fighting with the Congress, and would rather search for a new combination to keep out the BJP from power at the Centre.
When one takes into account another pointer in the wind-CPI(M)’s stubborn opposition to the nuclear deal with the United States-the contours of the Left strategy in the period leading up to national elections become clear-weaken the Congress and find a better alternative to keep out the BJP, in which the Left has a more crucial role to play.
If the Congress is to overcome the crisis, which is bound to come sooner or later in the shape of Left withdrawal of support, it will have to act boldly and take on both the Left and the BJP. Part of the reason for the party’s resounding defeat in Gujarat was the failure to take head on the forces working to erode the country’s secular polity.
The Congress also failed to take the Left head on and call its bluff on the nuclear issue. By all accounts, the comrades would have found it difficult to hold on to their vote-banks in West Bengal and Kerala, if the government had gone in for snap polls on the nuclear issue.
Time is running out fast for the Congress-led UPA. With Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati trying to play a bigger role at the national level, the Congress will find the going tough if it fails to come up with an aggressive and effective strategy to counter the BJP as well as the Left. Options for the Congress may run out soon.
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