Congress knights storm ex-Soviets

So, Sonia Gandhi was saying the obvious during her marathon campaign across the state: The Congressalone can provide stability. Kerala knows Sonia is saying the truth, except the Congress part. In a fishermen’s enclave in coastal Kerala, poverty joins unemployment in voicing the complaint: “We’re not interested. Who wants to vote every year? Some of us are in the Congress, some of us are communists, but our problem is common.”

But Sonia is popular interest. Thangappan, former wrestler, proud Mulayan, member of the Kerala Congress (one of the sectarian parties in the State) is rushing home for a quick bath. “The jeep is leaving at 12. I’ve to see her. By the way, have you ever seen her in person?” Sonia is an event. E.K. Nayanar claims she has only star value. For people less enlightened than Nayanar, Sonia is an event because she is subordinated to her surname. Historically, Kerala doesn’t have any quarrel with that surname.

It doesn’t mean that on February 28, Sonia will define the mandate. Though there are quite a few pundits who argue that the thin borderline between the Left Democratic Front(LDF) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) will be disturbed by the so-called Sonia effect. And it will help the UDF, goes the argument. In this very national election, this argument has only a very limited local relevance: for the Congress-led UDF, Sonia means revival; for the CPI(M)-led LDF, what’s there? “In this election, the LDF has no agenda,” says a political commentator in Thiruvananthapuram.

M.A. Baby, Delhi’s musical Marxist, is camping in his home State to defend his party and the Government it heads. “With limited resources, the LDF Government has done a wonderful job. Its performance is there for everyone to see. Full literacy. And gramsabha maximum democracy at the grassroots level”. Baby can go on. Who’s bothered, anyway? This is a national election, not a Nayanar-specific local election.

When it’s national, local factionalism forgets its class and caste. In a party like the CPI(M), it’s being reduced to a subterranean whisper. In the last State party meet held in Palakkad, V.S.Achuthanandan, the low caste from the south, trounced the high caste factional rivals and declared his class clout. “No factionalism, it is the triumph of democratic tradition,” says Baby. From the other camp (UDF) too, you hear the same thing. “We’ve a perfect understanding between us.” That’s how A.K. Antony puts his newly formed strategic alliance with ex-rival K. Karunakaran. When the nation calls, even disputes cease to be local.

The 20 seats in Kerala, now equally divided between the two fronts, are local only in terms of the candidates. In southern Kerala, the most national seat is Thiruvananthapuram, where a Congressman with a truly national ambition threatens to unseat a very rare, very humane communist, K.V. Surendranath. K. Karunakaran is a local’ leader who excels in fancy-dressing as a national neta in Delhi. “Karunakran gets things done,” goes the acolyte’s version.

Many titans had played out their destiny in Thiruvananthapuram. A refugee from Trichur (where the son — K.Muraleedharan is today struggling to redeem the father’s failure, that too by contesting against another decent communist, V.V. Raghavan), Karunakaran badly needs to win, for victory means the endurance of a national presence.

The Congress candidate who deserves to win, and it’s unlikely that he will lose, is V.M. Sudheeran. In Alappuzha, the backwater constituency with a Marxist tradition, he is pitted against a fresh face from the CPI(M), C.S. Sujatha. Last time, Sudheeran, a study in personal dignity and political literacy, wrested this seat from the Marxists. But Alappuzha has long ago lost its proletarian slogans, only the garish, granite memorials of the Punnapra-Vayalar struggle (part of Kerala’s communist mythology) remain today. The party has lost the struggle as well as the working class. For the CPI(M), Alappuzha today signifies a different kind of struggle — factional.

It’s the constituency of both the purged K.R. Gowri and the re-awakened Achuthanandan. It may very well become the permanentconstituency of V.M. Sudheeran.

An accidental irony, perhaps. The Congress’ redeeming faces are fighting it out — quite confidently — in communism’s ex-Soviets.

In Kannur, stagnant with the memories of revolutionary romance, Mullappally Ramachandran is experiencing the intimations of another victory. In north Malabar too, the CPI(M) have failed to nurture the legacy of struggle and sacrifice. If the leftists succeed in sending a respectable number of candidates to Delhi, that won’t certainly be a vindication of communism’s enduring relevance in the mofusils. In Kerala, the difference between the LDF and UDF is in the alphabets only.

And the candidates who defy this difference by virtue of personal integrity win the people. So M.P. Veerendra Kumar has a chance despite the venerable Mathrubhoomi’s (the Malayalam daily which he partly owns) sudden interest in photo-journalism.

In Kottayam, the wannabe Karunakaran, Ramesh Chennithala, may lose if for his bad hairstyle. So hopes Suresh Kurup, the youngMarxist with a beard that is less than Marxian.

In Mukundapuram, the people have not yet become as intellectual as the Marxist intellectual, P. Govinda Pillai. This literacy business, Comrade Baby, is free of intellect — sometimes.

Stability, after all, is a distant word. At home, it’s reasonably fluid. At a time of national crisis’, the lure of he distant stabilises the local politics. That’s why the Congress keeps smiling in Kerala — an unstable smile.