Congress in Kerala may be exulting too soon

B.R.P.Bhaskar
IANS

A landslide victory in last month's local elections has heightened the United Democratic Front's (UDF) hopes of returning to power in Kerala in next year's assembly elections but the Congress, which heads the alliance, may be exulting too soon. Its position is not as rosy as it imagines.

The credit for the UDF victory belongs not so much to the Congress as to its allies who helped consolidate minority support behind the UDF after the Communist Party of India- Marxist (CPI-M), which heads the rival Left Democratic Front (LDF), antagonised Muslims and Christians.

Kerala had created history in 1957 by voting the undivided Communist Party to office. It created history again in 1959 by staging a 'liberation struggle', which provided the centre with the excuse to dismiss the Communist government while it enjoyed majority support in the assembly.

The local election vote was 'liberation' by other means. All the forces which had joined hands in 1959 to oust the Communists from power came together again to end their reign over local bodies. The only exception was the Nair Service Society, the forward Hindu community's organization, which now officially follows a policy of equidistance from the two fronts.

In the local elections of 2004, the LDF had secured control of all five city corporations, 12 of the 14 district panchayats, a large majority of the municipalities and block panchayats and two-thirds of the village panchayats. This year, for the first time, the UDF seized control of a majority of local bodies at all levels with the exception of city corporations, where the LDF was able to retain a slender 3-2 lead.

The LDF victory in the 2006 assembly poll came as a hat-trick after successive wins in the Lok Sabha and local elections. In the past three decades, people have voted the LDF and the UDF to power in the state alternately. After successive drubbings in Lok Sabha and local elections, the LDF now faces the possibility of a reverse hat-trick.

The local elections victory has boosted the image of the state Congress leadership, now firmly in the hands of Leader of Opposition Oommen Chandy and Pradesh Congress Committee president Ramesh Chennithala.

For decades, the party had witnessed continuous infighting between an 'I' faction, named for Indira Gandhi, and an 'A' faction, named for A.K. Antony. Oommen Chandy inherited the 'A' faction when Antony moved to the centre. Ramesh Chennithala, a former protege of K. Karunakaran, gathered around him the remnants of the 'I' faction when the veteran walked out of the party, peeved with his neglect by the high command. With Sonia Gandhi backing them to the hilt, the Chandy-Chennithala 'jodi' established a condominium.

Karunakaran, 92, is back in the party but too old and weak to challenge the duo, whose clout is evident from the way they have delayed the return of his son and former state Congress president K. Muraleedharan. He had left the party with Karunakaran but did not return with him. When he finally expressed readiness to return Chandy and Chennithala reacted coolly and the high command did not want to go against their wishes.

While the Chandy-Chennithala combine is in an unassailable position within the Congress, the party's position in the UDF has weakened. The party's electoral performance under them pales into insignificance beside the strides made by its partners, the Indian Union Muslim League and the Kerala Congress (Mani).

The League is in a position to wield power on its own in many local bodies in its stronghold, the Muslim-majority Malappuram district, which happens to be the most populous one in the state. Unable to agree on the division of seats, the Congress and the League had opposed each other in some parts of the district. The League trounced the Congress in those areas. That puts the League in a commanding position.

In areas with a concentration of Christians, the Kerala Congress similarly outperformed the Congress. Its leader, K.M. Mani, had once described the party as one that "splits as it grows, and grows as it splits". He recently strengthened it by wooing back the breakaway factions led by P.J. Joseph and P.C. George, which were in the LDF during the last assembly elections and had helped it attract Christian votes.

Across the state, the UDF polled 15.65 lakh votes more than the LDF. Malappuram alone contributed a lead of more than four lakhs. Kottayam and Ernakulam districts, which have significant Christian populations, provided a lead of more than three lakhs.

The Church, which runs many schools and colleges, was annoyed with the LDF government's education policy. It reportedly played a role in the merger of the Kerala Congress factions. The CPI-M distanced itself from its former Muslim supporters since the Lok Sabha results showed that the association with some of them had cost it many votes. The bid to make up the loss of minority votes by appealing to majority sentiments did not succeed.

The change of government in the state every five years has been made possible by a swing of the pendulum in the southern districts of Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam and Alappuzha. As the minority parties command little influence in the region, elections there are a direct trial of strength between the CPI-M and the Congress. The LDF's lead of about 80,000 votes over the UDF in these districts is something the Congress has to worry about.

The political ball game has started

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Elections are here again. In the polling scheduled for October 23 and 25, Kerala’s voters will decide who should manage the affairs of the state’s local self-government institutions (LSGI) for the next five years.

LSGIs constitute the lowest levels of the administration. They have only limited powers. They cannot legislate. There is hardly any scope to raise revenues through taxation. But they have at their disposal grants allotted by the central and state governments.

The large number of posts at stake makes the LSGI elections the biggest undertaking of its kind. In the Lok Sabha elections, the state’s voters choose only 20 MPs. In the State Assembly elections they choose 140 MLAs. In this month’s LSGI elections they will choose more than 21,600 persons to run five city corporations, 59 municipalities, 14 district panchayats, 152 block panchayats and 978 gram panchayats.

A law enacted early this year raised the seats reserved for women in LSGIs from 33 per cent to 50 per cent. If the total number of seats in a body is an odd one, women will have one seat more than men. As a result, more than 11,200 seats will go to women. Since women can contest for general seats also, the number of women elected to LSGIs may exceed this number.

Half of all the LSGIs will have women at the helm. Where men are at the helm, there will be women in the No.2 slot. The top positions will be filled by drawing from the ranks of the elected members.

The entry of women in large numbers makes these elections quite unlike anything the state has witnessed so far. In recent years, fewer women have been elected to Parliament and the State Assembly than in the early years of Independence.

When 33 per cent reservation came into force, political parties experienced difficulty in finding candidates for the reserved seats since women have not been very active in the political sphere. They overcame the problem by drawing candidates from among family members of party leaders or members of affiliated women’s organisations.

This time the parties once again experienced difficulty as they had to find more women candidates than last time.

Unlike the Lok Sabha and the State Assembly, which are legislative bodies patterned after western parliamentary institutions, LSGIs are based on the Indian tradition of village panchayats (five-member councils). The system did not envisage separation of the elected representatives into treasury benches and opposition benches.

Respecting the essential difference between the western and indigenous models, for a long time the political parties stayed out of LSGI elections. Their members did contest LSGI elections but they did so without party labels.

During the past two decades, as the confrontation between the Left Democratic Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist and the United Democratic Front led by the Congress, the main contenders for power in the state, became intense, both sides started putting up candidates on party basis in LSGI elections also.

The three-tier panchayat system now in vogue all over the country is the result of an initiative taken by the late Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister. He decided to strengthen the lower levels of administration after he found that middlemen gobbled up most of the funds earmarked for schemes meant for the weaker sections of the society.

In Kerala, the last LDF government took the concept of grassroots level democracy a step further by initiating steps for decentralisation of power and people’s participation in the planning and execution of development projects.

Since then people’s participation has fallen into bad days. Schemes are now drawn up by officials and executed by contractors. Corruption in the administration and favouritism in the distribution of benefits under welfare schemes are widespread.

A number of new players have entered the electoral arena this time and some of them pose a challenge to the ways of the established political forces. They include activist groups which have been pursuing various causes including protection of the environment.

Also among the new entrants are organisations like the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Dalit Human Rights Forum, and CPI-M dissidents, some of whom are erstwhile supporters of Chief Minister VS Achuthananadan.

Both the LDF and the UDF are treating the LSGI elections as a dress rehearsal for the Assembly elections which are due next year. The CPI-M has said the election will be a referendum on the performance of the present LDF government. These are postures aimed at keeping the contests in the familiar matrix of alliance politics.
If the new entrants are able to upset the traditional equations in the LSGI elections, the political scenario may well undergo a change before the Assembly elections.