# Ajayan | A host of things seem to be going wrong for the ruling UDF - not necessarily because it has failed to deliver in its brief tenure, but because Congress squabbles keep spilling onto the stage at precisely the wrong time and in the wrong place. A senior UDF leader privately conceded that there may even be doubts about whether the wrong things are being said. Asked whether it was simply a case of the wrong person saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and place, he merely chuckled.
Congress leaders may dress this up as the party’s celebrated “internal democracy”. But UDF convenor Adoor Prakash’s complaint that he was kept in the dark about decisions and appointments, even as they were already in the public domain and known to coalition partners, makes the explanation rather difficult to swallow.
The senior leader’s verdict was more caustic. After becoming convenor, he said, the last anyone heard from Adoor was when he sought an Assembly ticket despite the high command’s stated position that sitting MPs would not contest. Having missed the ticket, his latest outbursts inevitably invite the suspicion of an axe to grind. But then, as the leader observed, this is hardly unfamiliar Congress territory. “Internal democracy” has often had the convenient elasticity of meaning internal discord.
Targeting its own Chief Minister is almost a Congress tradition. K Karunakaran and AK Antony, the old warhorses of rival camps, both tasted its bitterness. Now VD Satheesan finds himself in the crosshairs.
Ideology, however, appears to be conspicuously absent from the quarrel. If that were the issue, the arrows could have been directed at the government’s reversals - from allowing private players a say in Ministers’ travel to abandoning Opposition-era positions on curbing expenditure and Cabinet appointments, restoring the Lokayukta's powers, acting against alleged police excesses during the previous LDF regime, and maintaining the firm opposition to PM SHRI that once came naturally from the Opposition benches. Instead, the arrow points squarely at Satheesan. Why? The answer remains curiously offstage.
One party leader supplied his own interpretation: “I thought Adoor would revolt against Satheesan and team for going soft on the ED case involving Pinarayi and his family. Since he didn’t, the intentions speak for themselves.”
Adoor may have arrived as an unexpected gift for the CPM, but using him as a convenient smokescreen for Pinarayi Vijayan is proving less straightforward. At party conferences convened to examine the Assembly defeat, Vijayan has reportedly sought organisational support over the ED case involving him and his family. The controversy surrounding attempts to bring Lionel Messi to Keralam and the latest episode that led to the removal of the CPM’s Palakkad district secretary have added further political turbulence.
Nor is this the CPM’s first brush with such controversies. Keralam has not forgotten Prakash Karat’s public admission of serious allegations of sexual harassment and molestation against then Kannur district leader P. Sasi. After disciplinary action, Sasi eventually returned to a position of considerable influence, becoming Vijayan’s political secretary during his second term as Chief Minister. In the theatre of Keralam politics, political reincarnation can evidently have a long and interesting run.
The irony deepens. The official position now is that there is no complaint against the former district secretary. Yet some leaders who had earlier headed party panels examining sexual-harassment allegations and even deliberated on their “intensity” are now among his most vocal critics. The CPM’s moral compass, it seems, can occasionally acquire a rather flexible needle. Its internal “police mechanism” can investigate, pronounce and, this time, apparently identify the wrongdoer with unusual certainty.
Across the political divide, then, it is turmoil on every front. In the Congress, factional theatre threatens to make governance a supporting act. In the CPM, the much-advertised rectification drive appears to be waiting in the wings for its own cue.
And the voter? Left in the audience, ticket already bought, waiting another five years for the next show. The cast may change, the scripts may be rewritten and the slogans may acquire new costumes. But if the theatre remains the same, the absurdity is unlikely to leave the stage unless people decide to act.