# Ajayan | With the VD Satheesan Government barely a week away from completing six months in office, the honeymoon is over. Yet, its biggest headache is not the Opposition but the Congress, the principal UDF partner, whose internecine squabbles have become a millstone around the Government’s neck. The opening burst of energy and performance had raised hopes among voters who, disillusioned with the LDF, delivered a decisive electoral rebuff. But the initial sparkle is fading, the wheels are beginning to wobble, and the Government’s forward march increasingly resembles a political procession going nowhere. Its own house remains too unsettled for it to get much business done.

For anyone familiar with Congress politics, factional warfare and the perennial sport of trying to pull down one’s own Chief Minister are hardly breaking news; they are practically embedded in the party’s DNA. What is startling, however, is that the arrows are now flying from the usual disgruntled fringes occupying positions of influence - those entrusted with steering the party, leading its allies and manning its very command centres. The knives, it seems, are being sharpened within the very corridors from which leadership is supposed to emerge.

The first to lob the political bombshell was none other than Adoor Prakash, a man with his own unfinished business. Elevated to the Lok Sabha, he had desperately sought an Assembly ticket, which might have placed him near the top, if not at the very pinnacle, of the present Government. The High Command slammed the door, while some MPs nursing similar ambitions reportedly did everything possible to scuttle Satheesan’s elevation to the Chief Minister’s chair. Prakash’s disappointment was hardly a secret. He took his grievance to Delhi and returned without even the consolation of an assurance.

Now, apparently nursing those bruises, he has seized on the so-called energy crisis to complain of a lack of coordination within the Government. Ironically, as UDF convenor, he has little to show by way of protest from the alliance partners he is supposed to lead. That hardly strengthens his case. Having had his earlier outburst brushed aside by the High Command, he has once again chosen to hoist the flag of dissent in public rather than take his grievances to the appropriate party forum. Political disappointment may explain the bitterness, but it hardly excuses the breach of democratic discipline. In his eagerness to settle old scores, Prakash appears to have forgotten that a party convenor is expected to hold the alliance together, not publicly tug at the very foundations of his own Chief Minister’s authority.

And then came the energy crisis, in which the Power Minister had more than enough on his plate. Yet Sunny Joseph, who continues to occupy the KPCC president’s chair rather reluctantly, chose to shift the blame to the Chief Minister. Having passed the buck, he went a step further, claiming that he had been kept completely out of the loop and learnt of both the crisis and its resolution only through media reports. Between the UDF convenor firing from the hip and the KPCC president pleading ignorance, the party’s two key office-bearers seem remarkably unsure of their own briefs, let alone the authority their positions command. When those entrusted with holding the organisation together appear uncertain of where they stand, the rot is clearly deeper than a mere coordination problem.

How Satheesan handled the energy crisis, which he now insists never existed, is not merely debatable but demands closer scrutiny. There may be political logic in keeping colleagues at arm’s length, lest they mistake proximity for a licence to commandeer authority. But when that distance becomes a chasm, governance begins to suffer. Worse, from the privately chartered flight onwards, several of his own actions have been dogged by controversy, with neither the going particularly smooth nor the explanations entirely candid. The dissonance between the promise of a new political culture and the practice of old-style opacity is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. The rhetoric of change, after all, cannot forever outrun the reality of conduct.

Satheesan’s only consolation has been an Opposition that has so far failed to make a credible mark. After 10 years in power, and now sending youth and student cadres to the streets to indulge in violence and suddenly waving vague corruption charges over the energy crisis and bar licence after granting innumerable licences during its regime,  it sits rather awkwardly with the electoral verdict that decidedly ended its rule. Its newfound enthusiasm for standing shoulder to shoulder with agitators also rings hollow. The LPST rank holders protesting outside the Secretariat now receive its solidarity, but the ASHA workers, the foot soldiers of public health, were left to languish for months under the previous LDF Government, their demands ignored and their dignity publicly slighted. The irony is difficult to miss. Even the CPI(M)’s own trade union wing, at its recent conference, acknowledged how the party’s decade in power had alienated the working class. An Opposition that has yet to reckon with the resentment accumulated during its own 10-year tenure can hardly expect street theatre and belated indignation to pass for political credibility.

If Satheesan and the Government he leads genuinely intend to move forward, mindful of the emphatic mandate that brought the UDF to power, a verdict driven mainly by rejection of the CPM-led LDF and not faith in the alternative, he must first put his own house in order. Candour must replace convenient rhetoric; his words and deeds as Opposition Leader, until barely six months ago, must serve as a mirror rather than a forgotten chapter. He must bridge the widening chasms among his Cabinet colleagues, enforce collective responsibility and remind habitual dissenters that party discipline is not an optional accessory. He should know the honeymoon is over; the electorate will not keep extending the grace period.

Tailpiece: A senior CPM sympathiser summed it up rather neatly: “This Government must continue. If anything fishy happens, one group within will expose it. No need to wait for the Opposition’s rhetoric and blabbering. This is the best corrective mechanism, missing for nearly a decade.” When factional warfare becomes the watchdog, even the Opposition can take a holiday!