CPI-M warns UPA government of 'heavy political price'
Apr 20, 2007 - 4:33:35 PM
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'Apart from the popular discontent on the economic measures, the Congress and its UPA partners have also contributed to facilitating some of the successes of the BJP and the communal forces,' it added.
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By IANS,
[RxPG] New Delhi, April 20 - The Communist Party of India-Marxist - has launched its most bitter attack yet on the Congress-led government, accusing it of all-round failure and warning that it will pay a 'heavy political price' if it did not shed its present policies.
Even by the standards of unending Left attacks on the United Progressive Alliance - over the last three years, the commentary in People's Democracy, the official CPI-M organ, was terribly hard hitting and embraced virtually the entire leadership of the government.
The commentary made it clear that the CPI-M, which heads the 60-strong Left Front providing key legislative support to the UPA government, was getting sick and tired of the political dispensation.
Referring to the Congress defeats in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Delhi, it said the political situation was 'marked by growing disenchantment among the people with the UPA government' and spoke of a 'disconnect between what the people and even the Congress mass base are expecting and what the government and its ministers are striving for'.
While the commentary - by an unidentified 'political commentator' who is believed to be CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat - spared Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, it took potshots at Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia but without naming them. It also referred to Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
The CPI-M fire was directed at the government's economic and foreign policies, which it said deviated from the Common Minimum Programme -, the agenda of governance the UPA and Left agreed upon when Manmohan Singh took office at the head of a multi-party coalition in May 2004.
It also accused the UPA and its partners of providing fertile ground for the growth of the Bharatiya Janata Party -, which the CPI-M considers a communal outfit.
'The Congress leadership is at crossroads. It has to decide whether it wants to run a government - keeps the priorities of US companies like Wal-Mart uppermost or the country's sovereign interests. Whether it will muster the courage to direct the government to effect a major course correction, or, continue to concede political ground to the BJP and the rightwing opposition,' it asked.
'The CPI-M - resolved it cannot go along with the UPA government's neo-liberal and anti-people prescriptions. The Congress leadership should not take the support of the Left parties to the government for granted by posing the threat of BJP -.
'It is precisely because the BJP is benefiting from the Congress stance and the government's policies that the CPI-M firmly opposes all those political and economic measures which create the grounds for the communal forces to feed on popular discontent. The Congress leadership has to ensure that the government changes course. Failure to do so will extract a heavy political price.'
The commentary said Chidambaram 'glibly talks of achieving a 10 percent GDP growth when he should be seriously tackling the problems of inflation and price rise. His other concerns seem to be how to get the pension fund privatised and raise the FDI cap in insurance'.
It accused Pawar of being oblivious to the poor procurement of wheat from farmers by the Food Corporation of India, saying this would have 'a deleterious effect' on food security. 'The UPA government has totally failed to tackle the agrarian crisis.'
'The commerce minister is bent upon bringing FDI in retail by hook or by crook. The Wal-Mart-Mittal deal is one such venture. The Congress president is unable to stop FDI in retail. The UPA government and the Congress leadership will be responsible for ruining the livelihood of lakhs of small shopkeepers and petty traders, if the commerce minister has his way.'
It said Ahluwalia was quietly pushing 'neo-liberal policies' and that the government was using him to economic measures 'it finds politically difficult to adopt'.
'Apart from the popular discontent on the economic measures, the Congress and its UPA partners have also contributed to facilitating some of the successes of the BJP and the communal forces,' it added.
Accusing both the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party - of ganging up with the Shiv Sena to take power in corporations in Maharashtra, it said this was 'an unpardonable act for a secular party'.
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