The Left Front can still be considered a crowd-puller. This became evident when it managed to mobilise four lakh people at a rally here on Monday to observe the 50th anniversary of the food movement of 1959.
After July’s show of strength by Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee in which lakhs had turned up, the Front was determined to match her numbers.
At Monday’s rally, the Front appeared before the people as a picture of unity, where all allies spoke the same lines. The script, of course, was tailormade. The Front’s leaders played on the public mood and attacked principal opposition Trinamool and its ally, the Congress.
The LF flayed the Congress for price rise, which speakers at the rally predicted was leading to a slow and steady repetition of the 1959 food scarcity. The Trinamool, on the other hand, was accused of being party to Congress’s anti-people policies to unleash a concerted reign of terror in Bengal. Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee described the Trinamool as a clandestine ally of Maoists.
“Maoists and Trinamool have taken a joint responsibility to kill our workers. In west Midnapore, Maoists are leading the show, while in East Midnapore their ally Trinamool is doing the job,” he said.
