CPM never makes course correction, may not make a comeback: Taliparamba’s rebel MLA-elect T K Govindan

Kannur: On a day when CPM state secretary M V Govindan promised a full-scale introspection after the Left’s crushing defeat in the Assembly elections, one of the party’s oldest former insiders and Taliparamba MLA-elect T K Govindan delivered a stinging rebuttal: the CPM never makes any course correction. He even hinted that there may not be a comeback for the CPM after the Left Democratic Front (LDF) was reduced to 35 members in the 140-member Assembly.

“I have no experience with the CPM making a correction. It has not happened at the higher level or the lower level,” said Govindan, who was part of the CPM’s district-level leadership for more than 50 years. He quit the party in protest after M V Govindan made his wife, P K Shyamala, the candidate in Taliparamba, ignoring opposition to her candidature at all levels of the party.

T K Govindan said Shyamala’s candidature and her defeat in the election reflected the lack of inner-party democracy in the CPM. “This is a verdict against the CPM state secretary, his decisions, and his arrogance,” T K Govindan told reporters during his visit to the District Congress Committee office on Wednesday.

Speaking in Thiruvananthapuram after the CPM state secretariat meeting, M V Govindan said the party had not anticipated such a setback and would hold meetings at every organisational level to understand what went wrong. “We will conduct meetings at all levels of the party and assess the reasons behind the defeat. We will correct what went wrong and move forward,” he said.

But almost in anticipation of that response, T K Govindan- who defeated P K Shyamala by 12,551 votes in one of the CPM’s safest citadels- said such exercises would amount to hogwash. “The CPM will conduct course-correction meetings. There will be a lot of discussions. But they are all just hogwash. Not one person will be held accountable because of such exercises. My long experience in the CPM says the party will not make any correction,” he told reporters.

As the party leadership talks of consultations, feedback and organisational review, T K Govindan said he had seen this script before. 

“The party is facing its biggest crisis when M V Govindan is leading it as secretary,” he said, but added that the verdict was not against a person, but against the policies followed by the party. “Will the party correct the stands taken by the leaders? Will they change their language? Will they change their body language? Will they learn some humility? That’s what the people are asking.”

If the CPM corrects, it can make a comeback, he said. “But my experience is that the party has not made any correction. Even now, it is full of arrogance, that what they say is right, and the rest of you should obey. If that is the stance, the party cannot be saved.”

He said he would remain a Leftist within the UDF bloc and would not join the Congress. “I have made my stance clear, and the UDF has backed my stance. I will continue in my stance,” he said when asked if he would join the Congress.

He also ruled out aligning with P V Anvar, another UDF-backed independent candidate who lost to P A Mohamed Riyas in Beypore. “I told him I am now part of the UDF, and I do not align with his ideas. That is why I declined to meet him,” he said.

Earlier in the day, T K Govindan and his wife, K P Ramani, called on S R Vinodini, wife of the late CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, at her house. They also paid floral tribute to the late comrade's bust. Kodiyeri’s son, Bineesh Kodiyeri, described the visit as a personal one and not political.

Soon after the election drubbing, Bineesh had put out a Facebook post saying that while the party may get a chief minister like Pinarayi Vijayan again, it would never get a secretary like Kodiyeri. Though he attributed the remark to an unnamed comrade, the next line appeared to carry a sharper message: “The thought that I am bigger than all does not bode well for a modern society.” The post was later deleted.