CALCUTTA, OCT 08: The Left partners have voiced fears that the CPM pledging support to the Congress `when it's not actually asked for as a setback for the Left movement' might eventually prove to be an expensive political misadventure.Couple of days after the Communist Party of India (Marxist) conclave at EMS Nagar, the major Left Front partners are upset over the CPM's devoting its party congress to discussing the issue of support to the Congress alone.The Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), the All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) and even the Communist Party of India (CPI), feel the CPM ``has overplayed the BJP factor to overlook other pressing issues such as price rise, criminalisation of politics and corruption.''While the AIFB is holding two-day National Council meeting in Delhi from 10th of this month to discuss the CPM's stand and the strategy for `greater Left unity,' the RSP has already termed CPM's stand as `politically unwise.'A senior RSP leader and a LF minister Khiti Goswami felt hisparty would have preferred discussing an agenda for Left movement to dwelling on policies vis-a-vis a ``Congress Government which doesn't exist.''``We feel that the Left forces should maintain equal distance from both BJP and the Congress,'' Goswami said. ``The CPI's experience of supporting the Emergency should have left us wiser,'' Goswami said, adding that ``the CPM's offer to Congress may expose the Left parties to the charges of political opportunism.''Incidentally, the RSP believes that the ``Left parties cannot absolve the Congress of the evils it had introduced into the nation's polity for the last 45 years.'' ``The criminalisation and communalisation of politics, corruptions, you name one, and you would find that the Congress had introduced them into politics, how can we afford to be blind to these?'' Goswami points out.The AIFB, echoes similar worries about the `setbacks' which the former's stand will expose the Left movement to. AIFB general secretary Debabrata Biswas said: ``We cannotback a Congress Government. However, it's regrettable that the BJP-factor should have been played up to a point that we forget the political decay the Congress represents.''``For us both (BJP and Congress) are evil and there's a plot to replace our pluralistic political system into a two-party system, where all forces will be packed into two reactionary capitalist political groups, the Congress and the BJP. And I am afraid the CPM's offer to Congress is like walking into the trap,'' Biswas said.``And when the Government has not collapsed yet, any Left party should realise that it would sound rather odd to formulate a policy for another government,'' Biswas felt.Interestingly, the CPI, which has adopted a political line similar to the CPM's, felt that ``it's a loss to devote an event as important as Party Congress to discussing a single issue when you have several other issues to discuss.''Agreeing that both had to evolve a similar political line due to lack of options, a senior state unit leadersaid on the condition of anonymity: ``It's regrettable that the CPM party congress almost entirely focussed on a single agenda.''``Though the RSP, AIFB have a point when they say why discuss and waste time on a government that does not exist and why give the Congress a good certificate, but they're trying to underplay the evil forces BJP represents,'' CPI party sources said.
