The act of a late Malayalee writer-thinker of equating the Marxism practiced in India to occultism was perhaps a bit cruel. But the metaphor does not seem totally off the mark as the blockade by the CPI(M)-led lDF of Cliff House, the official residence of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, demanding his resignation over the infamous solar scam has already turned into a mere political ritual.
As the “indefinite blockade” entered the fourth day on Thursday, presence of activists at the stir dropped down to skeletal level. Also, chinks have appeared among the constituent parties of the Opposition front over the relevance and effect of the agitation. The main criticisms arising from within the lDF is that no party other than the CPI(M) wants to continue with the blockade.
To add to the Marxists’ woes, the organisers on Thursday had the unfortunate chance to understand the contempt with which the people viewed their agitation which denied citizens their right to travel when a woman, who wanted to pass through the road they had blocked, showered curses on the leaders who had organised the stir.
“Aren’t you ashamed of doing this by blocking the roadsIJ The communist party had approached me also and had taken Rs100 for funding this agitation. Is it proper to block our way like this after thatIJ” asked the woman who ridiculed the CPI(M) leaders present at the spot of agitation at the Devaswom Junction in Thiruvananthapuram, some distance away from Cliff House.
CPI(M)’s State committee member and Thiruvananthapuram district secretary Kadakampally Surendran tried to defend his party’s right to block the road in the name of the agitation by saying, “It is all for the people.” This enraged the woman further. “What peopleIJ Who are the people you claim to representIJ Is this the way you stage agitations for the peopleIJ” she asked.
As the woman was giving vent to her rage, somebody from among the CPI(M) leaders was heard asking, “Is she a relative of Saritha S Nair (the con woman who was one of the perpetrators of the solar scam)IJ” With this, the woman’s verbal attack became all the more vehement. Unable to bear it, Surendran moved away from the scene.
The lDF— mainly the CPI(M) — started the indefinite blockade of Cliff House on Monday after its other agitations like blocking of the Chief Minister at his Mass Contact programmes and the massive siege to the State Secretariat in August failed to force Chandy to resign over the solar scam in which he had been accused of direct involvement.
“Every morning, some 500 leftist workers would gather at the Devaswom Junction in the name of the siege to the Cliff House. The police would then religiously block the road with barricades. Then the ritual of arrests begins. By noon, the stir is over, workers go home and it would resume the following morning,” said Gopi, a shopkeeper in the area.
Even staunch leftist leaders admitted that the agitation was not going on as the lDF had planned it. As per the plan, at least 5,000 activists were to participate in the stir every day but the number has never been over 500 ad it was coming down further, they admitted. That the Chief Minister was mostly out of Cliff House also had affected the spirit of agitation, they said.
Even before its start, there had been no consensus within the lDF over the plan for laying indefinite siege to the Cliff House as a practical method of agitation. CPI, the second biggest constituent of the Opposition front, has reportedly called for an “honourable withdrawal” from the agitation as that party feels that it had become a equivalent to a ritual.
The Kerala left has not been able to convert any of its stirs this year into victory. The lDF and their feeder organisations had staged several agitations in 2013 like the Surplus land Seizure stir and the agitations over the Government decision to raise Government employees’ retirement age and to implement participatory pensions scheme but all of them had failed miserably.