Pinarayi group lets off solar-tainted Kerala CM
The communists have once again proved their capacity for betrayal with the suspension of an enthusiastic leftist agitation in Kerala organised with the goal of ousting Congress Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, charged with aiding and abetting a huge fraud — the infamous solar scam — involving money, sex and Ministers. Kerala's CPI(M)-led lDF started its siege of the State Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram as the final battle to force Mr Chandy to resign over the scam and declare a judicial probe into it. It was a meticulously planned agitation in which at least 40,000 lDF activists participated. A panicked Government called in Central forces, deployed over 6,000 State police personnel and even warned hotels, lodges and citizens against offering even food to agitators. Despite all this, tens of thousands of activists converged on the State capital to hold a peaceful but determined protest. For all its pretensions of boldness, the siege did shake the Government on the first day itself, Monday.
When Mr Chandy held his first Press conference on Tuesday to announce a judicial probe, his body language and countenance indicated that he had prepared himself for the worst. But at his second Press conference held within an hour, his face reflected confidence: The deal had been struck. Within minutes, State CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan announced to stupefied agitators that the siege was being called off as it had succeeded in forcing Mr Chandy to declare a judicial probe (though he had made it clear that neither he nor his office would come under its purview). The irony is that the stir, held to force Mr Chandy who had lost credibility before his party, the ruling UDF and even the Congress high command, to resign, served no other purpose than helping him ensure his survival, at least for the time being.
Allegations are now pouring in to the effect that the Government's mediators had, by using blackmailing tactics, forced Mr Vijayan and his confidants to betray their own comrades. They are said to have threatened him that he would face big trouble if he did not get the lDF to call off the stir and thus ensure Mr Chandy's continuance as Chief Minister. He was told that the police had collected solid evidence of his involvement in the conspiracy behind the murder on May 4, 2012, of rebel Marxist leader TP Chandrasekharan, for which many Marxists are already behind bars. Mr Vijayan, still nursing the desire to become Chief Minister one day, naturally cannot afford another case against him when the Central Bureau of Investigation has already put him in the dock in the SNC lavalin corruption case. Mr Vijayan and the Home Ministry have denied the charge, but lDF partners are already up in arms. However, what is important for the people of Kerala is not the feud triggered by the situation in the lDF but the fact that the Marxist betrayal has smothered a promising movement by the media and the people to oust an allegedly corrupt ruler.