Kerala’s Opposition lDF led by the CPI(M) seems to have recovered from the political fatigue it had been suffering from in the beginning of the campaigning for the 16th lok Sabha election as electioneering reached a feverish pitch across the State.
The main factor behind this recovery is the truce declared by nonagenarian Marxist leader VS Achuthanandan, Opposition leader and CPI(M) central committee member, with the official party leadership after a gap of a decade. Achuthanandan has already completed campaigning for lDF candidates in four southern constituencies.
The severe jolts suffered by the Congress-led ruling UDF in the form of the infamous solar scam, the fraudulent land deals of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy’s former gunman Salim Raj and the Government’s inability to settle satisfactorily the issue Western Ghats protection report, etc have also helped in enhancing the left’s confidence level.
The severe criticisms the Kerala High Court had showered on Chandy on Friday over how he had erred in selecting members of his personal staff and how his office had become a haven for “people who are capable of doing anything” and “land mafia gang leaders” has given a sharp weapon to the left to attack the Congress and the UDF in the campaign field.
Also, the mighty Catholic Church, which used to take a strictly anti-communist stand in elections, does not seem to be all that antagonistic towards the lDF this time mainly due to the allegedly hypocritical attitude the Government had shown towards the issue of the K Kasturirangan report on Western Ghats protection.
The Church in the mountainous Idukki district had the other day come out openly in support of the left in the case of Joyce George, an Independent candidate propped by the settler farmers’ organization fighting against Kasturirangan committee proposals and which is critical of the Chandy Government’s interventions in it.
However, the most significant positive development as far as the left is concerned is Achuthanandan’s endorsement of the CPI(M)’s finding that the murder of rebel Marxist TP Chandrasekharan in May, 2012 was the handiwork of a single party functionary, a theory the nonagenarian leader had earlier refused to accept.
“VS’s offer of truce in this matter had come at a time when the CPI(M) - and therefore the entire left - was finding it difficult to carry on with its campaign plans in the context of the stiff protests from KK Rama, widow of Chandrasekharan, and her party RMP and the open support the UDF and the Government to them,” says Shanavas, a Kochi-based journalist.
He points out that this, and Achuthanandan’s declaration of ceasefire with State CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, his enemy No 1 in the party for over the past ten years, became a huge blessing for the left. “The left’s situation in Kerala is that the lDF is a soundless public address system without Achuthanandan,” Shanavas joked.
The truce between Achuthanandan and Pinarayi has been so extensive and deep that the former even endorsed the fielding of five Independent candidates - out of the total 15 the CPI(M) has put up in the State with 20 lok Sabha seats - giving an impression to enemies that the party is in total unity and to the workers a new energy in campaigning.
“VS’s act of reaching at an understanding with the official party leadership has generated several doubts and has created a feeling in many people that he too could be an opportunist. But political reality is that it has pushed the UDF into the defensive because the Congress or its allies do not have a campaigner as effective as him,” says senior journalist PVS Warrier.
