New Delhi: Top CPI leader A B Bardhan on Wednesday
virtually attacked the CPI(M) and put the blame on it for the
Left parties' decline in the elections and said it was time
for the Marxists to buck up and reverse the trend.
"The CPI(M) is the leading partner of the Left Front and
in fact, the defeat (in the recent elections) was a grim
reminder of what went wrong with the Left Front (in West
Bengal)," he told a private news channel in an interview.
Bardhan said the CPI(M), as the biggest Left party, should
take the major responsibility for the debacle and work to
retrieve the lost ground.
The veteran leader said corruption, especially at the
lower and middle levels of the party, and arrogance were among
the major reasons for the poll debacle. But it was "not an
endorsement of (Trinamool Congress leader) Mamata Banerjee's
policies or programmes."
"If there is realisation that what is wrong needs to be
corrected, if one realises that one's lifestyle, one's
behaviour with the people, one's arrogance is to be given up,
people will still be behind the Left because it has a
programme and has done a lot of good things in West Bengal."
He also said that if the Left Front had "functioned as a
front, if it had listened to the voice of the people, if the
LF and some of its partners ... had not started thinking that
they are for keeps and they will last forever just because
they had been there for three decades, when you start thinking
like that you become undemocratic."
"I do believe that at the top they (CPI-M leaders) are
trying their best, they are worried. It has to penetrate down
below," Bardhan however maintained.
Asked whether the CPI(M) leadership got distanced from the
people, he said "I think so. All of our people got distant
from the people and I will blame them all."
Bardhan also blamed the CPI(M)'s partners -- CPI, RSP and
Forward Bloc -- for not correcting the largest Left party, but
said "I would not like to make it appear as if we were the
ones who were trying to correct every time and they were the
ones who were refusing to be corrected. That will be pitting
them against the others."
On the demand for advancing the assembly polls slated for
2011, he said there was no need for it or to resign as "that
would mean like running away from the battlefield and I do not
want to resign now."
Bureau Report
First Published: Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 22:06