Is anti-incumbency working against Pinarayi?

By John Cheeran

Considering the outright rejection of Congress and UPA across India, chief minister Oommen Chandy and KPCC president V M Sudheeran can console themselves for avoiding a rout and keeping the party intact in the state. The Congress had to battle anti-incumbency both at the Centre and state.
The fact that UPA’s six ministers from the state, five of them Congressmen, in the fray – Shashi Tharoor (Thiruvananthapuram), K V Thomas (Ernakulam), K C Venugopal (Alappuzha), Kodikunnil Suresh (Mavelikkara), Mullapally Ramachandran (Vadakara) and E Ahamed (Malappuram) – have won is important.
What saved the day for Chandy, who had turned this election into a referendum on the performance of his government, was the fear of Narendra Modi among minorities and the anti-incumbency mood against CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan (who is leading the party since 1998) among non-partisan voters.
Despite winning an additional seat (LDF has won four seats more) compared to 2009, for the CPM the results have come as a dampener since it reveals the party’s inability to turn the nationwide anti-UPA mood into votes. Remember, CPM lost Vadakara, despite a ‘faction-less’ party and V S Achuthanandan’s new-found bonhomie with Vijayan.
It’s clear that UDF received the support of Christian and Muslim communities apart from retaining its goodwill among upper caste Hindus. But Chandy would do well to remember that the minority support comes with a caveat — defeats in Kannur, Idukki, Chalakudy and Thrissur prove they can be tough bargainers.
The big message is, however, that Modi’s version of Hindutva is ready to swamp the state’s traditional Hindu parties – CPM and CPI.
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Comrades, don’t bury the idea of revolution

By John Cheeran

A mandatory period of mourning follows when an idea gets buried, given that it was an idea, and not petty posturing for selfish ends. What does the silence in the V S Achuthanandan camp signify after the leader has accepted the inevitable that there is no life after CPM and outside of it? Is it an endorsement of the last of the communists' meek surrender? Or is the betrayal too shocking that his faithful have lost the will to react and fight on their own?

It is important that after VS disowned his populist political positions within the party favouring Pinarayi Vijayan, no one has come forward to expose the hollow nature of the veteran leader’s botched revolution. T P Chandrasekharan’s wife Rema has said she will not disown Achuthanandan despite his opportunistic shift. Does she have a choice?

It is quite understandable that CPM and its official mouthpiece can’t stomach a critical column directed against the party and its new poster boy and take refuge in preaching what media should do or not. The taming of Achuthanandan is the lone victory that CPM can boast of in recent times and it suits Deshabhimani’s agenda. Defending the reformed leader is CPM’s duty but is this dirge, rage, relief or glee?

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VS or the art of having a happy funeral

By John Cheeran

V S Achuthanandan has seen the writing on the wall. It’s every man’s right to have an honourable funeral. And there is no harm in trying to ensure that it takes place appropriately. The veteran CPM leader’s recent rethink on his position within the party and, largely, in Kerala civil society makes it clear that he wants to say his farewell as a good, disciplined CPM member, if not as politburo member, and not as a good communist, an epithet he used to describe the slain rebel T P Chandrasekharan. Those who were waiting all these years for VS to leave the CPM fold and lead the revolutionary charge have been left disappointed. The unkindest cut has been in describing Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) as the tail of the Congress.
But how can VS be blamed for realizing that there is little time left for grand posturing and giving shape to the perfect communist party in the world? It’s remarkable that VS has revisited his controversial positions regarding the party state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan’s “incorruptibility” at a time when an even greater ex-communist came knocking at the CPM door, almost pleading for re-entry. K R Gowri, when she was expelled from CPM, was even a bigger star in 1994 than VS is now. 

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What they are talking about in Kerala

By John Cheeran

Congress in Kerala is in all sorts of trouble. Group war is raging in the party and the CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) is seeking the ouster of chief minister Oommen Chandy. The saving grace is that CPM itself is divided over bringing down the United Democratic Front (UDF) government thanks to the internecine rivalry between party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and opposition leader V S Achuthanandan, who is now seen as the last communist in Asia, including China.

Consider the charges against Chandy. It has been alleged that Chandy is party to a series of frauds committed by a private company, Team Solar, which swindled people of money to the tune of Rs 10 crore (the official figure quoted by Chandy is Rs 1 crore).  Serious among them is an accusation levelled by Sreedharan Nair, a provincial Congress leader and industrialist, who says he had received an assurance from Chandy that Team Solar is a venture that needs to be encouraged, which made him part with Rs 40 lakh to Saritha S Nair, a femme fatale associated with the solar firm.

Chandy says Sreedharan Nair had parted with his money a week before he met him last July. All Malayalis are now debating whether the femme fatale, Saritha S Nair, was with the Nair Who Had The Money, when he met the chief minister. Chandy, who streams visuals from the chief minister’s office live (Is he the world’s first politician to do so? Will have to check Limca Book of records) says visuals of his meeting with Nair are not available. And the incorruptible Chandy has now appointed a panel of Malayalam speaking Sherlock Holmes to retrieve the lost visuals, sift through them and spot whether there was a sexy Nair, apart from the Money Nair. 

Rivalry among Congress A and I groups has ensured that details were leaked to the media about extensive telephone conversations that Saritha had with chief minister’s office, his assistants and an entire spectrum of Congress leadership in the state, including home minister, members of Parliament and Kerala Pradesh Congress chief Ramesh Chennithala. And remember Kerala’s chief minister did not have a cell phone in his name till now and has been making use of his flunkeys’s phones to stay connected!  

There is no denying that both Saritha and her partner, Biju Radhakrishnan, had a criminal past, before they hit upon the ruling Congress establishment with a seemingly credible and fashionable scheme of solar energy at homes and industrial units.

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