Naming a Prime Ministerial candidate even before the people have decided who they will bring to power is tantamount to insulting the electorate, according to CPI (M) MP Sitaram Yechury. That is the reason the Third Front has refrained from naming its PM.The CPI (M) is of the opinion that naming a Prime Ministerial candidate by a political party or a bloc before the Lok Sabha elections are over is tantamount to insulting the electorate at large. This is the reason why the Left led Third Front has refrained from naming a Prime Minister. This was what CPI (M) politburo member and Rajya Sabha MP Sitaram Yechury has to say.
The MP, who was addressing a gathering in Kolkata at a seminar, the ‘Present Political and Economic Scenario and the Role of Citizens’, on Sunday organized by the Rajasthan Bengal Maitri Parishad, said that it was up to the electorate to effect a change. It is the voter who will elect or reject candidates. With nobody sure who will form the government how could a Prime Minister be named. The CPI (M) leader’s take on a Prime Ministerial candidate comes in the wake of the Congress ridiculing the Front for not being able to name a PM. Yechury said they were looking at forming non-Congress, non-BJP secular government where the Left will play a role and it was for the people to decide who they wanted in at the Centre and then a PM can be chosen where there were many to chose from. The government at the Centre has to deal with the global financial crisis and infuse economic stimulus to the country, he added.
Training his guns on the Congress’s central leadership for the caustic comments made by Sonia Gandhi, Rahul and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during their poll campaign in Bengal, Yechury said a quarter century ago Rajiv Gandhi had called Calcutta “a dying city” and paid a heavy price where the Congress failed at the hustings in the red bastion. This time around the party is making the same mistake saying that Bengal had witnessed no development despite the Left being in power for 32 years. He said the Congress was insulting the people of Bengal.
The Marxist MP wondered why the people of the state were voting the Leftists to power time and again if there had been no development of the state in over three decades. “Are people in Bengal not intelligent enough?” he asked and added that it was tantamount to insulting the people of Bengal.
The Congress, he felt should come up with an alterative development plan for Bengal instead of just being critical of the Left. He said Bengal having made rapid strides in land reforms is now moving towards rapid industrialisation.
Unlike CPI (M) general secretary, Prakash Karat but in resonance with other leaders like Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Left Front chairman Biman Bose, Yechury too kept the door ajar for a post-poll alliance with the Congress. He said he has been asked whether his party would support the Congress again to which he has said there is a political battle on where the Leftists are fighting the BJP and the Congress. “If I am asked what will you do if you lose, then what is the point in fighting this battle?” was his rather amorphous statement.
Later speaking at an election rally in Arrambagh in Hooghly, Yechury said the Congress’s anti-people policies were helping the BJP. He added that the saffron brigade was heading towards getting a Lok Sabha seat in Darjeeling in Bengal thanks to the Congress.
