Politbureau member Pinarayi Vijayan, the mightiest leader of the Kerala CPI(M), may like to describe nonagenarian Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan as just one of the candidates of the party-led lDF who enjoys special status only on the campaign scene, but it is the latter who is now setting the agenda for the left for the May 16 Assembly election, at least in the case of the sensitive issue of liquor policy.
On Friday, Achuthanandan publicly rejected the allegedly ambiguous stand adopted by Pinarayi and his neo-liberalist associates in the CPI(M) over the question of whether the left, if it came to power, would reopen the bars closed down as part of the Congress-led ruling UDF's liquor policy and announced that these would remain closed even if the lDF won the polls.
"The party's liquor policy is what general secretary Sitaram Yechuri has stated," Achuthanandan said in a Facebook post on Friday. "That policy is to bring down the use of booze in phases and thus implement total liquor renunciation. It was as part of this policy that Yechuri said bars closed by the UDF regime wouldn't be reopened," the Facebook post said, adding that the lDF would open no new bars.
Effectively, the post by Achuthanandan, who is not even a member of any of the decision-making panels of the CPI(M), is a direct response to a comment by Pinarayi on the liquor policy. Asked for his opinion on Yechuri's stand, Pinarayi had the other day said that matters like that would become clear only when the lDF decided the liquor policy for a year after coming to power.
This, and the earlier statement by lDF convener Vaikom Viswan, a Pinarayi associate, that Yechuri might not be totally aware of the realities of Kerala while speaking about bars, had prompted the Congress and the UDF to accuse the left of not having a clear liquor policy and of having assured bar owners of renewed business if it won the election.
In a tone that rang like an assertive announcement, Achuthanandan said, "No new bar would open in Kerala if the lDF came to power. There will be a total overhauling of the existing system of liquor distribution. The goal of this overhauling will be to bring down the consumption of liquor," the veteran leader said in his Facebook post.
"What should actually be done is not to close down all bars in one go. What is needed to be done is to promote a culture conducive to renunciation of liquor and to develop a campaign in accordance to it. Such a culture has come up against smoking. The lDF, if it comes to power, will adopt a liquor policy modeled on that line," Achuthanandan said.
Observers say that the intervention by Achuthanandan, arguably the most popular political leader in the State and certainly the left's most valued campaigner, in the issue of liquor policy shows the determination of the Yechuri camp in CPI(M)'s central leadership to formulate and control the party's strategies for the Assembly election.
Meanwhile, the Congress teased the CPI(M) by alleging that it was groping in the dark over the issue. "The lDF is still confused in the matter. What is its policyIJ Is it what Yechuri stated or is it what Pinarayi is speaking ofIJ The liquor policy issue has become yet another problem of divisionism in the CPI(M)," said State Congress president VM Sudheeran.