Letter 4: Samuel Tissot to National Committee March 8

 

Dear Comrades of the National Committee,

I am now writing in response to your letter of March 7.

In responding to your conditions for a discussion on the revised date of March 17, I would like to start by stressing that I have been nothing but open and honest with every comrade I have spoken to about my political concerns. On three separate occasions since February 27, I have told party members verbally (including twice to Comrade Lantier) that I have not contacted anyone outside of the ICFI or in other sections of the party regarding my political differences.

I am happy to repeat this in writing here:

Throughout the nearly five years I have been a member of the ICFI and the three and a half years I have been an active member of the PES, I have not once contravened the party’s constitution nor violated its political discipline, including any discussion of its internal political matters with anyone outside of the ICFI. This extents to the entire course of this exchange regarding my political differences.

I believe this settles the first two conditions of the NC’s list to go forward with a discussion of my political differences.

The demand that I unconditionally assure the NC that I will not share any of my political differences or this correspondence with tendencies or individuals outside the IC at any point in the future, however, is unacceptable. If I were to accept this condition, then the leadership would be totally unaccountable for any action, principled or otherwise, that it took against me. As long as I am a member of the IC, I will abide by its constitution and the political principles of Democratic Centralism. However, if I cease to be a member of the IC I reserve the right to share this correspondence and my political positions as I see fit.

If I have understood the third condition correctly, then I am afraid I do not believe a principled political discussion of my differences before the NC can take place. I hope I have interpreted this condition incorrectly and that a productive discussion of political differences can in fact take place.

I must also protest against another interdiction asserted in the letter, although not listed in the three conditions for the March 17 NC meeting to go ahead. This is the command that I “do not begin this discussion by claiming that what is cited in my previous letter is not what you said.” I will not respond again to the assertion that everything written in the March 5 letter was accurate, as this has already been raised in my March 6 reply.

As comrades will recall, in my previous reply I described the March 5 letter as “largely false” and I still believe this to be the case. The verbatim quotes are of course true, and I find it bizarre that comrades interpreted my previous letter as disputing this1. Nevertheless, I reserve the right to correct the way in which these quotes have been misinterpreted and ripped from their context to attribute political positions to me that I do not hold as well as other assertions in the NC’s March 5 letter, made without quotations, that are false.

To be clear, I will not argue that those quotes are false, but I will demonstrate to comrades that they have been stitched together in a manner that removes or distorts the political content of the positions I raised and defended during the February 28 meeting.

I was told by Comrade Lantier during our February 27 phone call when I first raised these differences that the only way forward was a “free and open discussion on the NC.” My ability to speak freely to the NC and NC’s recognition that its authority over my public political actions will cease if I am no longer a member of the IC are critical preconditions for such a discussion to take place. I am raising this issue of an end to my membership of the IC explicitly as this was raised by the leadership in the first meeting concerning my political differences. I will again remind comrades that Comrade Lantier stated in the February 28 meeting that if I did not intend to withdraw my criticisms then I should leave the party.

If the preconditions stipulated above, which I believe to be in line with our party’s constitution and the principles of Democratic Centralism, are acceptable to the NC then we can proceed with the revised time schedule proposed by the NC.

I would also like to ask the NC to clarify two further points raised by its March 7 letter.

Firstly, the verbatim nature of the quotations from the February 28 discussion of more than an hour raises the question of whether it was recorded? If so, why was this done without my permission? If it was recorded, then the entire transcript should be released to the NC and myself. I would also like to remind members that this was not a meeting of the NC or any other political body of the PES or IC. The discussion was proposed by Comrade Lantier as a meeting between him, myself and Comrade Gnana. Comrade Kumaran also was present although I had not been made aware that this would be the case before.

The discussion was initially supposed to be in-person before it was changed to being online a couple of hours before it commenced. If the meeting was recorded, then this raises the question, does the leadership regularly record unofficial discussions with comrades without their permission? Did my raising of political differences with Comrade Lantier lead to the decision to move the meeting online so it could be covertly recorded?

Secondly, a number of phrases used in the discussion of February 28, the NC’s letter of March 5 and the reply of March 7 refer, implicitly or explicitly, to my wasting of the party’s time or an individualistic approach to this exchange. I will remind comrades of the NC that I raised these political differences discreetly with Comrade Lantier in the hope that these positions could be refuted in a comradely manner through precise political argumentation. It was only at the request of Comrade Lantier that I shared these views with a wider circle of comrades at the February 28 meeting, from which the current exchange of letters followed. 

My only request in my March 6 reply to the NC was to ask to be allowed time to prepare a political response to the NC’s March 5 letter. Please can the NC explain what aspects of my political conduct through this exchange have been individualistic and politically unprincipled? And why my compliance with the leadership’s requests as to the nature and extent of political discussions has been a waste of the party’s time?

One final note, as for the author of the March 7 letter’s statement that “Regrettably” my March 6 reply  “does not address a single historical or political issue raised in my letter of March 5,” I will remind comrades that my reply was sent to state I disagreed with many of the characterisations of the March 5 letter and to request time to prepare a written response as a foundation for a principled political discussion. I do not see any reason why the NC should find it regrettable that such a request was not yet a complete political response.

I hope that on the basis of the considerations above that the March 17 meeting can proceed in a manner which clarifies the political differences raised and strengthens the political understanding of the PES and the ICFI.

Fraternally,

Samuel Tissot

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