New Delhi: The CPM on Friday said that price rise and corruption were major factors in the assembly polls and claimed that these issues have worked in favour of the Left in Kerala and against the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu. "The popular outrage against high-level corruption and the strong urge for a corruption-free government has definitely worked in favour of the LDF (in Kerala)," CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat said in an article in the latest issue of party organ 'People's Democracy'.
Karat said the election campaign in Kerala also brought out "another significant fact": that there was "no visible anti-incumbency feeling against the LDF government" which was noted "even by the media hostile to the Left".
"In the absence of any serious discontent among the people about the performance of the LDF government, the Congress-led UDF is banking upon the caste and communal organisations to rally support for them," Karat said, adding that Kerala also saw "the flow of money and liquor on a scale not seen before."
He said the LDF "can be confident that it has broken the veil drawn on its successful campaign through manufactured opinion polls and hostile media coverage."
Claiming that Congress president Sonia Gandhi's corruption charge against LDF government was "not only misplaced but found no takers even among Congress supporters," he said the LDF campaign effectively drove home the point that bringing UDF to power would only bring back "the bad old days of corruption and importing what is happening under the auspices of the UPA regime at the Centre."
In Tamil Nadu, the top CPM leader said "no amount of money (distributed among voters) would be able to influence the verdict this time," observing that one could sense the mood of the people during the campaign. "If the DMK is thrown out in this election, it fully deserves such a fate. The Congress party which is seen as its partner in corruption will suffer a worse fate," he said.
Maintaining that price rise and corruption were the two major issues thrown up during the campaign in both the states, he said, "Everywhere, in both rural and urban areas, people are concerned about these two issues and the effect they have on their lives."
Noting that the "biggest corruption scandal since independence was perpetrated by the DMK", he said the people of Tamil Nadu "associate high level corruption with nepotist family rule."
Terming DMK as the "first authentic regional party in the country", Karat lamented, "It is a tragedy to see the degeneration of such a party into a family enterprise fully involved in crony capitalism and injecting money power so cynically into the electoral system."
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