CPI makes for serious introspection

Thiruvananthapuram: More than the serious setback suffered by the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Lok Sabha elections in Kerala,  what matters to the Communist Party of India (CPI) is the gradual erosion in  its vote share.   

At the state level,  and at the level of its four constituencies,  the party has secured much fewer votes than it did in 2014,  which has been taken up by the state leadership for analysis.

The state executive council which met the other day has decided to dig into the precise reason why it suffered such a fall in votes polled.  The review report states that other coalition parties did not suffer such a hit in terms of vote share, as the CPI did.

On the whole, the party lost two per cent of its votes.  Constituency-wise breakdown of percentage of vote fall is 14 in Wayanad, eight in Thrissoor, one in Mavelikkara and three in Thiruvananthapuram.

The party will try to find out if there was any failure at the booth level that resulted in the loss of votes disproportionate to the LDF's loss.

The leadership also discounted the assessment that the reason of defeat was loss of minority votes which constituted only less than ten per cent,  and even in booths where backward communities outnumbered upper caste voters,  the party was found to have lagged behind.

And these were booths where in any elections the party used to lead and that demanded in-depth review.   The party feels that there were factors that went against the LDF right from booth to constituency level.  In fact the wave inKerala was anti-Modi,  and that has to be analysed objectively.

CPI deems it cannot be a substitute for BJP on issues of Sabarimala and national matters.  There was a state of affairs when Rahul Gandhi was thought to be a possible future prime minister and that Congress would be the largest single party.  Together with this, factors like the opposition to salary challenge during the flood crisis,  the failure to deliver flood relief in time,  political violence,  the charge against the inaccessibility of chief minister, local issues and fake propaganda via social media were identified as having contributed to the defeat,  with varying impact of each.

The party also realizes that when LDF votes went in favour of UDF,  it disproves the notion that LDF votes were permanent.   In the party's view, when Muslim organizations entered the fray in favour of Congress and UDF,   the Christian clergy including the Catholic church largely did not make any public intervention.