Straight bat: Parties confused, voters may not be

The who’s who on both fronts is in the race, confusing voters as to who will finally make it. Will CPM pick up Opposition leader V S Achuthanandan, a
darling of the masses, or politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan, the stern-faced apparatchik?

On the opposite camp, Congress has let the trio of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, KPCC president V M Sudheeran and Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala rough it out. That’s how it looks for now.

But the utter confusion among the major parties on projecting their chief minister candidates should vapourize as soon as these leaders ramp up on electioneering. The clincher will be the swell at their respective election rallies.

The Congress high command has dissipated the focus on the trio, though the slogan is for a second consecutive term in office. CPM is banking on the electoral pull of Mr Achuthanandan but the cadres are not sure what the party make of him after the polls.

Last time there was no such confusion for the LDF. Large VS cutouts put up by candidates sought votes “to strengthen the hands of the hero of Punnapra-Vayalar struggle”.  It was a vote for VS. The proletarian party never used to concentrate it all on one person though they had done a similar trick with Ms K R Gowri, ditching her at the time of reckoning.

The crowd of CM probables may not confuse the party rank and file because they vote for the party. But the impact of a divided leadership on the non-committed voters, the most crucial component of the electorate, is hard to predict because contests in Kerala have been too close. The vote tally between the major fronts in the 2011 Assembly elections was 0.89 per cent.

Says Dr Sanjay Kumar, director of the Centre for Study of Developing Societies: “It’s true that the lack of clarity on the part of major coalitions will leave the non-committed voter confused because they identify with the leader than the party. But when it comes to the crunch, their affinity for the leader would translate itself to the party because leadership is templated on the political party”.

However, Dr Suhas Palshikar at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the Savitribai Phule Pune University feels the crucial difference would be the response of the youth, a sizeable section of them of the non-committed segment, to the Modi factor. Having tried both major fronts, they would want to experiment.

He said it was true the NDA was not a major force in Kerala. But that would not deter the youth, electorally. More than the confusion on the post-poll leadership, what would make a critical difference to Kerala Assembly elections should be the pull of the BJP, said Dr Palshikar.