Setback for KM Mani’s dream to be CM

Thiruvananthapuram: Thirteen budgets and 50 years as legislator, minister and the unassailable political icon of pro-Church Catholics in rubber country, K M Mani has had a protracted political career. Mr Mani nursed the ambition to cap his career as Kerala Chief Minister. Now, this may remain just a dream.

The jury is still out whether he had pocketed Rs 25 lakh in exchange for an assurance to help reopen bar hotels, as alleged by hotelier Biju Ramesh. But the Vigilance court and the High Court verdicts for a further probe into the charges, rejecting Vigilance’s closure petition, have created the impression that there is more than meets the eye.

At 82, this workaholic does not intend to rest. From a humble ward president of Congress in Marangattupilly in Pala, Kottayam, Mr Mani has grown in stature that even the BJP-led Centre chose him to head the Empowered Group of Ministers on GST.

His first stint as a Minister during the Emergency was noted for his determination to fight the odds and be ruthless to achieve it. He was alleged to have back-stabbed his mentor, the late K M George, by raising the bogey of the same person being Minister and party chairman.

George had to make way to accommodate Mani and former Power Minister R Balakrishna Pillai. George returned but soon died of a heart attack.

It is ironic that Mr George’s son, Mr Francis George, was witness to the dramatic fate that has felled Mr Mani from the pinnacle of his career.

Perhaps Mani, of humble origins, is the product of a politics of intrigues and backstabs that he had decided quite early on in his career that he would not succumb to any of these even at the expense of being a practitioner of these unedifying virtues for his political survival.

Ever since Mr George’s untimely demise, Mr Mani was Kerala Congress and KC was Mani. The once monolith splintered into different clones, sometimes regrouping and splitting again, giving rise Mr Mani’s famous coinage: “Kerala Congress is a phenomenon that grows as it splits and splits as it grows”.

His penchant of repartees, orations and legislative business illustrate his personality. The graduate from St Joseph’s, Trichy, belonged to the generation of educated politicians and had the gumption to propound his own working class theory, provoking peers in the Left parties.               

The resignation is the first major setback to his political career and that when he is about 83 and lacks the physical stamina for a sustained bout.

They say he was wedded to Pala, not Mrs Kuttiyama, his wife. The abiding relationship manifested in Pala being an Assembly constituency with no former MLA as Mr Mani had an unstinted 50-year run.

Friends say Mr Mani would surprise his detractors and be right back soon.

 

 

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