Kerala’s CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan had undertaken his recent 26-day Kerala Raksha Yatra for instilling a new energy into the organisation before the lok Sabha polls but it ended the other day virtually as a complete fiasco as his mission was reduced into defending the party in the context of the various adverse developments that cropped up during the exercise.
Pinarayi was forced to use even his hour-long speech at the rally in Kozhikode on Wednesday that marked the conclusion of the march for complaining about the existence of “paid media” which, according to him, was receiving money from anti-Marxist forces to run a campaign against the CPI(M).
This was the third Kerala march Pinarayi had undertaken in less than a decade. Observers say that the two previous marches also had ended like the third one. The first march in 2006 was drowned in the tsunami of divisionism in the CPI(M) while the second, held in 2009, was marred by the CBI case against him over the Rs 374.5-crore SNC lavalin corruption scandal, they say.
The very start of the Kerala Raksha Yatra on February 1 was spoiled by the CBI’s act of filing a revision petition in the High Court on January 31 challenging the November 5 verdict of the Special CBI Court in Thiruvananthapuram discharging him, seventh accused, and six other accused from the case relating to the SNC lavalin scam.
As a result, he was forced to devote almost the entire speech he delivered at the February 1 inaugural of his Yatra at the Martyrs’ Memorial in Alappuzha to explain how the Congress-led UDF Government in the State was using the CBI to hound his party by targeting him and to claim that the agency was never going to get anything to nail him.
Though Pinarayi had started his Yatra in style, it failed to draw media attention for long as KK Rama, widow of rebel Marxist leader TP Chandrasekharan who was killed by a Marxist gang, started a hunger strike in Thiruvananthapuram on February 3 demanding a CBI probe into the conspiracy - allegedly involving top CPI(M) leaders - behind the murder.
“But the first blow to Pinarayi, party and the march came on February 7 when the Government decided to constitute a special investigation team of the Kerala Police to look into the alleged conspiracy behind the murder as a prelude to instituting a CBI probe into it following which Rama called off her strike,” a senior journalist of a pro-left paper said.
Being the ultimate leader in the State of a well-organized party, Pinarayi was able to get heavily attended receptions for his Yatra at various centres but that was not enough to keep the exercise in media focus as newspapers and television channels kept on carrying reports about the Government decision and discussing the consequences it held for the Marxists.
The biggest blow to the march came on February 20 when the State Cabinet took the decision to hand over the probe into the conspiracy behind the Chandrasekharan murder to the CBI. “From then on, the only subject of Pinarayi’s speeches had been how the Government was disregarding the legal system to re-probe a case that had already been settled by the court after formal trial.
“Pinarayi undertook the 2006 march to project himself as the left’s chief minister candidate. The 2014 march also was, in a sense, part of an effort to project him as the man for the top State job after the next Assembly polls due in 2016. But things seem to work against him and the party each time he launches such an exercise,” said a former CPI(M) theorist based in Kochi.
The ex-theorist questioned Pinarayi’s claim that the Yatra was successful in giving new energy to his comrades ahead of the lok Sabha election. “How can he make such claims when the top party leadership, including himself, is under the scanner of probe agencies and when he does not have enough time even to defend himself and the party against serious chargesIJ” he asked.