Cong shouldn’t go on self-destruction mode
The Congress party in Kerala has yet to learn lessons from its devastating defeat in the last Assembly elections, where it lost for the second consecutive time. Instead of taking the ruling LDF head-on—which is offering them one issue after another on a platter to corner them—the Congress leaders are busy fighting among themselves. Things have worsened to the point where seven out of the 16 Congress MPs from the state had recently approached the Congress high command against the KPCC president K Sudhakaran. Though the central leadership has told the senior leaders not to air any public statements, there has been no end to the public bickering. The rebelling MPs insist they are left with no options but to air their views openly as no meetings are being held in the party.
There is some truth in what the MPs allege, as the reorganisation of the KPCC has been pending for more than a year, and the party organisation is as good as dead. The leadership also has avoided convening office-bearers’ meetings fearing schisms.The other constituents in the UDF point out that the Congress party, which leads the front, needs to take up issues against the government in a consistent manner. Amid this, Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor has also been posing quite a challenge to the Congress after contesting for the post of Congress president. While the younger lot in the state Congress have openly come out supporting Tharoor, the seniors in the party, including Opposition leader V D Satheesan, former KPCC president Ramesh Chennithala and AICC general secretary K C Venugopal, are determined to see to it that Tharoor comes nowhere near the top slots. This has further added to the prevailing confusion in the party.
Interestingly, all these happen when the LDF government provides the opposition with more than enough reasons to put them in a spot. The Congress should realise that performance in the Assembly is not enough to convince the common person to vote for it, and this is something even the other constituents in the UDF have been reminding the Congress openly. A political party should have an organisational structure in place and at least some semblance of unity to win the people’s trust. And that is something the state unit of the Congress party should not forget if it is to survive.