Opinion - Editorials

INTERMINABLE FACTIONALISM

THE RECONSTITUTION OF the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee appears to be one last desperate attempt by the Congress high command to contain rampant factionalism in the State unit. In a reversal of its earlier policy of pleasing different factions at different times, the national leadership has now put those with no strong factional loyalties in charge of running the organisation. Not surprisingly, this has pleased only the new KPCC members and displeased all the factional leaders. Although the heavyweights of the four major factions, K. Karunakaran, A.K. Antony, Vayalar Ravi and Ramesh Chennithala, have been accommodated as permanent invitees to the KPCC, the intention clearly is to undermine their hold on the organisational hierarchy. While Mr. Antony has agreed to abide by any decision of the high command, Mr. Karunakaran has raised the banner of revolt. His only concession is that he will try to carry out his fight within the party to the extent possible. From a man known for his brinkmanship, this is moderate. But the problems for the party might only be just beginning. Mr. Karunakaran and others who feel slighted by the revamp will bide their time to demand their pound of flesh.

The perception is that this is as good a time as any for the Congress high command to clamp down on factionalism. The Lok Sabha election is out of the way and the Assembly contest two years away. Mr. Karunakaran will not be able to hold the party to ransom by threatening to break ranks and float his own outfit. In any case, the party suffered its worst ever defeat in the Lok Sabha election despite striking a compromise with him at every turn in the run-up to the polls. Now, in a low-risk situation, the high command must have sensed an opportunity to move less appeasingly with dissidence.

However for the very reasons factionalism thrived in the past, it will be difficult to paper over the differences within the organisation by merely `reconstituting' the KPCC. The Antony-Karunakaran factional war can only euphemistically, in Congress partyspeak, be termed intra-party rivalry. The two camps were actually different parties in the early 1980s, with Mr. Antony heading the Congress (A) before merging it with the Congress in 1982. Although he was very much a part of the Congress from his student days, he was seen in the 1970s as the head of a youthful dissident brigade in contrast to the loyalist, old guard image of Mr. Karunakaran. Their differences are not limited to a personality-driven power struggle. Indeed, the two leaders are creatures of different interest groups within the Congress. The Antony-headed split mirrored the Congress (O) breakaway from the Congress led by Indira Gandhi at the national level. This was the reason why Mr. Karunakaran was able to command support inside the party for his seemingly personal agenda. The factionalism had become institutionalised in the State. Even those who broke away from a faction (notably Mr. Ravi and Mr. Chennithala) ended up constructing factions of their own. This is because posts and positions in the party have invariably been distributed in terms of factions. There is no space in the Congress in Kerala for functionaries without a factional tag. Under normal circumstances, fresh organisational elections, in which different groups can demonstrate their strength at the grassroots, are the only democratic means of separating the pretenders from the leaders. Evidently, the sooner these are held, the better it will be for the party. There can be no better way to expose those who exercise political influence and make demands disproportionate to their support base. But then it would be a very unCongress thing to do, paradoxically, in one of India's most politically conscious States.

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