THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Left Democratic Front (LDF) convener Paloli Mohammed Kutty has said that the Leader of the Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan will certainly be the LDF’s choice for Chief Minister if the Front wins the Assembly elections.
"Nobody has any doubt about that. When an accomplished leader like VS who has led the movement for such a long time is around, there can be no second question on that," Mr. Mohammed Kutty said in an exclusive interview granted to The Hindu . The question posed to him was who would play the leading role in the event of the LDF getting a majority in the April-May Assembly polls.
The LDF convener, who fielded a wide range of questions on the LDF’s agenda of governance and the challenges it saw in the days ahead, agreed that the Front would have to give serious thought to the constant complaint, heard since the first Communist Government, that crucial subjects such as education and health were being handled by minor allies. "This is an issue which should be examined in all seriousness and resolved," he said, but would not go any further.
Mr. Mohammed Kutty saw nothing surprising about the support extended to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the LDF by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), led by Abdul Nasir Maudany, and various other Muslim groups, and felt that this was only indicative of the changes that had come about in the perceptions of the minority communities about the Left and the CPI(M) on account of the happenings within and outside the country over the last several years. There is a general feeling among minorities that it is the Left, particularly the CPI(M), that is raising all their legitimate issues and that it is Left forces at the global level and the CPI(M) in India that have responded correctly to the imperialist threats, he pointed out.
The LDF convener sought to dispel doubts about the LDF’s stand on acceptance of foreign loan assistance for Kerala’s development and said that the Left has no opposition to loan assistance from multilateral sources if it would not require it to go in for structural changes. "Our stand is that they should not demand structural changes, that we should have the sovereign right to decide such matters. We must also examine whether the loan is in the general public interest. Our party’s stand is that if both these conditions can be met, there is nothing wrong in accepting assistance," he said.
Asked whether the Congress-Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran) poll alliance would affect the tie-up between the LDF and the DIC(K) in various local bodies, he said that if at all the DIC(K) chose to do so both the sides would lose control of some local bodies. On the possibility of a merger between the Congress and DIC(K) in the post-poll scenario, he said his information was that many in the DIC(K) were opposed to such a merger.
Asked what would be the single important agenda of the LDF if elected to power, he replied that it would be to address the breakdown in law and order in the State. The situation, he said, is so serious that tackling it could not be delayed by even a few days. "We must intervene immediately to provide a sense of security to the people. We can formulate the other projects later. The situation is so bad," he said.
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