Mandate 2004: Signals and Opportunities

In March 1977 when Indira Gandhi finally ‘ordered’ elections little did she know that she would be in for a massive shock. When the results were out, the Congress stood liquidated almost everywhere except the southern states. Likewise in December 2003, the Sangh Parivar too could not possibly anticipate that by gambling for early elections it would only be hastening the downfall of the Vajpayee regime. But the ‘upset’ is now a recorded fact. The BJP and its allies have been virtually decimated in all but a few states. At the end of the day, two of independent India’s most arrogant and anti-people rogue regimes have met with the same fate. Good riddance!

There is a strong tendency in the media and especially in NDA circles to describe the present outcome as a fractured mandate without any focus or thrust. We are also told that the overall outcome is essentially the sum total of rather disparate state-specific verdicts. While there is indeed a good deal of variation in the results from one state or region to another, the results do indicate a strong countrywide rejection of the BJP and the NDA. The trend is probably most clearly reflected in the national capital and neighbouring states like Haryana and UP and even in Modi’s Gujarat, a traditionally strong bastion of the BJP, where the BJP has had to take a severe knock.

Indeed, the end of the ‘Atal era’ apart, the warning served on the man-eater Modi regime of Gujarat and the collapse of the Naidu rule in Andhra are among the most redeeming features of the 2004 verdict. Not only the countryside, much of urban and even metropolitan India has refused to buy the NDA’s ‘India shining’ propaganda. The much talked about ‘feel-good factor’ became a crude joke across the length and breadth of the country. The plight and anger of the ‘other’ India – the real India inhabited by the starving rural poor, the crisis-ridden farmers, the unemployed and an increasingly insecure working class – transformed the BJP’s fond ‘feel good’ dream into a veritable ‘feel bad’ nightmare.

Midway through the elections, the BJP made a desperate attempt to counter and defuse this anger – described as ‘anti-incumbency’ factor by psephologists – by once again invoking the bogey of instability. But unlike in 1999 when the ‘stability factor’ did play a major role in the elections, this time round even the ruling classes’ most sacred concern for stability did not come to the BJP’s rescue. The 2004 verdict can only be described as an emphatic rejection of the reigning elitist model of ‘development’ and a powerful reassertion of the real issues of employment, livelihood and basic amenities for rural India and for the working people at large.

A key aspect of the BJP’s ‘Mission 2004’ targets was the goal of securing an independent majority for the party. In the course of the campaign Vajpayee even appealed to the electorate not to burden him again with the tiresome task of running another coalition regime. Campaigning in Haryana, Advani called upon the people to vote for either the BJP or the Congress. Yet the BJP’s own tally dropped below 140 seats while a partially rejuvenated Congress could not cross the 150 mark either. In UP the BJP tried all kinds of tricks to spoil the electoral prospects of the Samajwadi Party, but in vain. Like the Left in West Bengal and Kerala, the SP in UP has also succeeded in securing its highest ever tally.

While the attempt to foist a two-party model has thus been stalled, most of the non-BJP non-Congress parties seem resigned for the time being to a two-coalition model led either by the BJP or the Congress. In spite of a very good electoral showing by the non-BJP non-Congress parties, especially by the Left and the Samajwadi Party, it is the Congress which has come to seize the political initiative. In the face of a Congress comeback after nearly a decade, the only expression of the Left’s independence so far has been a welcome refusal by the CPI(M) to participate in a Congress-led coalition government at the Centre.

To conclude, the 14th Lok Sabha elections have indeed delivered a big blow to the Sangh’s agenda of Hindutva and ‘hard state’ and to the reigning rightwing and pro-imperialist economic and foreign policies. The obscurantist and sectarian agenda of the Sangh has been pushed back and the basic issues have come back in a big way. The challenge before all progressive forces is to seize this opportunity and build up a powerful movement for a genuinely modern and democratic India.

CPI(ML) welcomes CPI(M) decision to stay out of the Congress-led coalition

The CPI(ML) welcomes the decision taken by the CPI(M) Central Committee not to participate in a Congress-led coalition government at the Centre.

It must be understood that in the course of signalling the end of the Vajpayee regime, the outcome of the 2004 elections has particularly expressed a strong rejection of the anti-people and pro-imperialist economic policies. The reverses suffered by the Congress governments in Kerala, Karnataka and Punjab are no less significant than the rout of the Naidu government in Andhra and the warning served on the Modi government in Gujarat.

The new government must be called upon to repeal POTA and release all political prisoners, mete out effective punishment to the perpetrators of the Gujarat genocide, provide immediate and adequate relief for the rural poor and crisis-ridden farmers and reorient the country’s economic and foreign policies.

A most redeeming feature of the mandate of the 14th Lok Sabha elections is that the communal fascist agenda of the Sangh has been pushed back and the basic issues have come back in a big way. The challenge before all progressive forces is to seize this opportunity and intensify the movement for a genuinely modern and democratic India.

Votes Polled by the CPI(ML)-Liberation in the 14th Lok Sabha Elections, 2004

Left Must Pursue it's Own Agenda Forcefully

Stock market crash of May 17 and earlier related developments may be seen as an exercise to put pressure on the forthcoming regime to go unabated with economic reforms with a rightist orientation undermining the Left. The attitude and approach being adopted by the big business and the media to project Left as anti-development and anti-change vis-à-vis policies of economic reforms started more than a decade ago. And it certainly requires for the Left to put forth its agenda and people's issues without giving any concessions to the rulers. The common people and toiling masses can not allow the ruling class from evading the vast range of issues adversely affecting their lives which certainly are the outcome of economic reforms being perceived by the bourgeoisie for more than a decade.

One more thing that’s been exposed by the May 17 crash is the state of the Indian economy where the FIIs and foreign speculative capital which have shown their capacity to hold country’s stock markets to ransom by selling in a big way leading to the crash on the Sensex. A significant reason for the market to crash was the pulling out of foreign funds. According to a stock broker, anywhere between $2 billion and $2.5 billion was expected to be pulled out within a few days. And after the close of trading on May 17, the figure already have touched to 1.5 billion mark.

Moreover, it is not just political developments in India that are triggering off the sell button of foreign investors. Stocks are reaching to a low in many countries at the moment. China and India have been seen as the two emerging markets that have caught the fancy of imperialist countries and the MNCs. In India, these were the policies followed by the BJP-led NDA that gave concessions to the MNCs and big business without actually strengthening country’s economy and therefore such a sell off must not be viewed as quite unexpected one.

Many corporate leaders have shown a preference for the next Finance Minister for either Manmohan Singh or P Chidambaram. They are quite convinced that the Congress, the party that started it all in 1991, would only take forward the ongoing reforms further. As a Congressman said to the media that Manmohan Singh, has no intention of rolling back any of the liberal policies even as he speaks mildly on television. “He will not agree to their (Left's) demands. When it comes to reforms, Dr Singh is extremely committed,” he added. “The economic reform was the brainchild of the Congress and we hope that with the party coming to power, the reform process will get a boost,” Bajaj Auto Vice-Chairman Madhur Bajaj said. The corporate sector was hopeful that the process of economic reforms would continue even if the Left parties joined the Congress-led coalition. “We expect that Manmohan Singh will be the next finance minister. The Congress knows the rules of the game and I do not think the Left parties will try to derail the process,” Bajaj said. The Federation of Indian Export Organisations has suggested in clear terms that the “flexibility in labour laws" should be looked upon by the new government.

Yet, the market forces did not leave any scope and nakedly came out with this unprecedented desperate pressure and openly pleaded continuity of the rightist economic plank. The outgoing Finance Minister was only laughing behind the scene. This dangerous trend gives a clear message for the Leftists and the working people that any pro-people shift in the ongoing anti-people rightist direction of our economy cannot be soft-peddled but would demand hard resistance and protracted struggle.

The Main Culprits of Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal

Pentagon has dismissed the grave charges of cruelty against Iraqi prisoners as “outlandish, conspiratorial and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.” But devastating accusations against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the May 24 edition of The New Yorker magazine and Newsweek exposed that Rumsfeld secretly approved a plan to use harsh interrogation methods (read torture) on prisoners in Iraq. This pan of operation includes encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation to obtain information for the prisoners was known to President Bush and fewer than 200 operatives were approved by the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, according to the report. Newsweek affirmed that a memo written by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales after the September 11, 2001 attacks may have established the legal foundation that contributed to abusive treatment. This publication forced the US Congress and called for additional investigations into the Iraqi prisoners' abuse scandal to determine whether responsibility lies higher up the chain of command than with the seven Army reservists who are facing criminal charges by making them scapegoats.

Largest Israeli Demonstration Against Palestine Occupation

On March 13, an anti-war demonstration in Israel, largest so far, demanded withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied Palestine. 120,000 Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square to the sound of John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” and "Imagine” and warmly applauded repeated calls to withdraw from Gaza and return to the negotiating table. The big weekend rally is said to have marked the re-emergence of the Israeli peace movement, marginalized for most of the last four years, as leftists joined forces with moderate centrists in the biggest display of anti-war feeling since the beginning of the intifada more than three and half years ago. Shimon Peres, leader of the mainstream opposition Labor Party, told the rally: “The demonstration we’re holding tonight is not a demonstration of the left. It is a demonstration of the majority.”

Referring to the outcome of last month’s referendum in which 100,000 Likud members voted against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to disengage from Gaza, Peres said the country could not be held to ransom by a mere 1 per cent of the population. Meanwhile, residents of the southern Gaza town of Rafah were piling their possessions into the back of cars and onto donkeys as they braced themselves for the beginning of another Israeli demolition operation following the destruction of close to 100 homes late last week.

More Than a Million Marches in Havana against US Designs

President Fidel Castro condemned the US Administration by affirming that George W. Bush has no morals or moral right to talk of terrorism, human rights or freedom and democracy, at the beginning of a giant march by 1.2 million Cubans along the Havana Malecón to the U.S. Interests Section on March 12. The march was organised to condemn and protest and repudiate the brutal and heartless measures proposed by the Bush administration against Cuba and former's so called project of ‘regime change’

In his address Castro said “in the world that Bush wants to impose today there is not the least notion of ethics, credibility, standards of justice, humanitarian sentiment or principles of solidarity and generosity. Everything written on human rights in the world of Bush and that of his allies is a monumental lie, and in that context recalled that thousands of millions of human beings are living in subhuman conditions.

“You have neither the morals or the moral right to speak of freedom, democracy and human rights when you boast sufficient power to destroy humanity, when you have ignored the United Nations, when you violate the rights of any country and engage in wars of conquest in order to seize resources.”said Castro. Fidel stated that Bush only has the right of brute force to intervene in Cuba’s affairs and proclaim a transition from one system to another. He warned that the Cuban people could be wiped off the face of the earth, but not subjugated if subjected to the humiliating condition of being a U.S. Neocolony. He affirmed that human beings do not and cannot understand freedom within a regime of inequality like the U.S. and recalled that the only equality in the Black ghettoes and the American Indian reservations is that of poverty and social exclusion.

Fidel charged that Bush “has decided that our die is cast,” and made his farewell like the Roman gladiators who were to fight in the circus: “Ave Caesar, we who are about to die salute you.” “But,” he assured, “in that case Bush will be thousands of kilometers away and I will be in the front line to die fighting in defense of the homeland.”

OBITUARY

Comrade Suresh Yadav died of cancer on May 7 in his native village Gangta Kalan in Godda district. He was one of the founder members of the Party in that district and a member of the District Committee. He was 53.

Com. Suresh actively associated himself with the communist movement from his school days and became a member of the CPM at the age of 16. He soon became a full-time activist. He joined CPI(ML) in 1985 and took the responsibility to organised the Party in Godda. He was also the District Secretary and member of the State Council of the Indian People's Front. Com. Yadav always lived a very simple life and always remained committed to the communist ideology and service to the people.

A large number of people came to participate in his funeral from nearby villages. A condolence meeting was organised in his memory on May 12 in Godda which was attended by a number of leaders from many Left and democratic parties including CPI(ML) CCM Prabhat Kumar.