Amid wrangle, LDF lays groundwork for CPI-CPI(M) detente over Kerala Deputy Opposition Leader post

The Left Democratic Front (LDF) on Tuesday appeared to lay the groundwork to assuage the Communist Party of India (CPI), which has increasingly been at odds with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)], the dominant partner in the alliance, over what it sees as the latter’s veto of its repeated demand for the post of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Kerala Legislative Assembly. 

LDF convenor T.P. Ramakrishnan’s high-profile visit to the M.N. Smarakam, the CPI’s State headquarters, seemed to signal that the CPI(M) was willing to revisit the dispute, which the Leader of the Opposition Pinarayi Vijayan had bluntly deemed a “settled matter of the past”. 

Mr. Ramakrishnan, who held a brief closed-door meeting with the CPI State Secretary Binoy Viswam, signalled that the rapprochement was not immediately at hand. He said the discussions were in their nascent stages and denied any rift in the coalition. Mr. Viswam merely stated that “CPI and CPI(M) pursued the same politics”. 

Mr Vijayan’s public “dismissal” of CPI’s demand appeared to, at least temporarily, rock the cohesion and organisational secrecy that have long defined intra-LDF deliberations.  It also seemed to provoke Mr. Viswam to temporarily abandon the LDF’s tradition of confidentiality in alliance matters by openly signalling that the CPI’s demand for the post of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition was non-negotiable. He said CPI’s demand placed collective strength above arbitrariness in LDF’s functioning, and that the question of rank and official perks that came with the constitutional position was not the animating factor.

Mr. Viswam’s statement also seemed to be a continuing critique of the purportedly prevailing internal dynamic in the LDF, which the CPI believes was one of the main reasons for the alliance’s defeat in the elections. Notably, the CPI had slammed the CPI(M) for signing the “Hindutva politics”-loaded PM-SHRI accord for federal funding of school education, sans consultations within the LDF. It had also denounced the CPI(M)’s perceived failure to strongly condemn the allegedly anti-Muslim rhetoric of SNDP Yogam general secretary, Vellappally Natesan, which the party felt alienated minority communities and, at a stroke, failed to consolidate Hindu votes in favour of the LDF.