Cong finally lands punch, CPM on the ropes; BJP out

Ajayan Rahul Gandhi, Rahul Mangootathil

# Ajayan | If one Rahul was busy stealing the national spotlight with the ‘Vote Chori’ that catapulted Congress to be on top, another Rahul in Kerala was busy stealing his own party’s thunder, crashing headlong into a sleaze scandal.

The fiasco was a godsend for the LDF, and especially its battered anchor, the CPM. Drowning in its own pile of scams, it suddenly found a freebie it hadn’t managed to earn on its own: Rahul Mangootathil’s implosion. Overnight, the comrades dusted off a moral compass they’d kept aside to rust for decades and demanded his resignation. After all, his thumping Palakkad win had been a slap that still stung the CPM. And with his phone calls and chats leaking like a bad soap opera, Mangootathil practically handed the CPM the scissors to cut him down.

But the comrades’ moral theatre was short-lived. Congress, for once showing rare backbone, suspended Mangootathil, though still letting him squat on the MLA chair he refused to vacate. Historic, for a party allergic to decisive action, when its opponent, the strong CPM has its own police and probe panels within the party. Forget that nothing comes out. Now Mangootathil sits marooned in the Assembly, politically and morally, like a boy put in the naughty corner.

Another Palakkad bypoll this late in the game could gift the BJP an Assembly seat - an outcome Congress wasn’t foolish enough to risk. So, this surgical strike hurt not just the CPM, but the BJP too.

The Left government has been rotting under a mountain of stink: money laundering charges against top CPM leaders via a UK conduit, a High Court slap on the LDF Government and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan guarding the Home portfolio for shielding ADGP Ajithkumar with a sham probe, healthcare in tatters, education in freefall, the killing potholed roads and crumbling national highways which the State Government wants to inaugurate before the elections… it has been a festering heap of scandals that should have buried this Government alive. The Mangootathil issue gave the CPM just enough distraction to gasp for oxygen.

But oxygen soon turned toxic with the suspension. The CPM is now grilled on its own selective morality. Why no action against MLA Mukesh, still dragging a scandal in court? Or against the minister who was allegedly slapped over womanizing? Or another Minister who fell for lewd phone chats? PK Sasi was only paper-demoted in the party while kept snug in a tourism body. Another Sasi, accused of molestation, was quietly recycled as Pinarayi’s political advisor. Hypocrisy for the public, but comrades call it “party discipline”.

M V Govindan, CPI(M) state secretary, Kerala

With VS Achuthanandan gone, the last moral spine of the party is dust. What remains is a circus of Lilliputs spinning excuses for even the moral bankruptcy of their leaders. Once asked whether Mukesh should resign, party State secretary MV Govindan cracked the sick joke: “If he’s absolved later, will he get his MLA post back on moral grounds?” And yet, with a straight face, this very same man dares to demand Mangootathil’s head on identical “moral grounds”. In today’s CPM, where compromises are currency and conduits rule the roost, morality is nothing more than a temporary, transferable post, once a fiefdom of the Congress and other right-of-centre parties.

Mangootathil’s meteoric rise without ever touching grassroots mud, unlike his predecessors of yester years, was bound to backfire. This time, Congress rightly leashed him. It could’ve gone further by stating the obvious - that he was suspended for refusing to quit. Even so, the party has set a benchmark that leaves the comrades scrambling in their swamp of compromises-for-power which earned it a second term and daring to eye a third.

With its comatose Kerala leadership, BJP can only watch from the ICU. Congress strike yanked the plug on the faint Palakkad pulse the BJP mistook for life - flatline. All that’s left is to tag along with the CPM’s anti-Congress rant, a pale, provincial hollow echo of Modi’s “Congress-mukth Bharat” chorus. And if Pinarayi and Modi suddenly sound like they’re reading from the same hymn sheet, don’t blame the public for noticing. The fault lies not in their ears, but in the comrades’ desperate new choir practice – both also humming the same tune.