Straight bat: Winnability over ideology

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Young CPM activist K P Baiju, shouting and gesticulating in front of the TV crew a fortnight ago in Wadakkancherry, is the season’s toast. He may not be as iconic as the unknown protester, who blocked a column of tanks at Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989, the day after the crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

Baiju’s impromptu speech conveys the party workers’ anguish over CPM’s preference for outsiders instead of the cadre to pull off a few seats. KPAC Lalitha soon read the message and opted out.

But that remains a one-off. The unblemished Mr P K Gurudasan, the sitting MLA in Kollam, suddenly lacks lustre as a candidate. On the strong red earth of Kollam, popular actor Mukesh is more desirable to Mr Gurudasan.

Has Mr Gurudasan become persona non grata for being considerate towards Opposition leader V S Achuthanandan or because some pollster has found the seat unsure and has to be reinsured with a glamour quotient? Workers are confused about the real reason and worried about the final outcome.       

In the north, posters in Azheekode reflect the agony of workers, who had witnessed or at least have been aware of the party’s long-standing feud with the “renegade” M V Raghavan, whose son and Reporter channel honcho M V Nikesh Kumar is now the LDF candidate. His candidature punctures the party’s claim to the martyrdom of five youths mowed down by the police at Koothuparamba on November 25, 1994.

Mere observers as well as party workers are trying to find out the logic behind these apparently inscrutable decisions.  There are also charges that the party is looking for polarisation by fielding media person Veena George in Aranmula.
 Such questions are not posed against BJP’s cast of celebs because the party has been known to depend on glamour to make a breach in the Hindi heartland. For Left parties, such an approach used to be too flippant because of the strong ideological underpinning.

Does this mean that ideology, the staple of political discourse in Kerala, is giving way to pragmatism? The attempt to put up apolitical figures as candidates is indicative of the emerging trend of ideology taking the backseat. The UDF, LDF and the BJP seem to have realized that there is a considerable segment of voters for whom “deliverables” are more material than dialectics.

The trend of tinsel town heroes and heroines, sports stars, TV anchors et al getting tickets is a pointer to the rapid de-politicization of the State’s electoral discourse. Whether this portents well for Kerala or marks an irreversible shift in real politics is too early to answer. But there are definite straws in the wind of a growing realization among all political parties that “business as usual” will not work this time in Kerala.