With allies like these
A death and a resurrection put Chandy government in a tight spot
Fate seems to be bent on dealing hard blows to Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. At least two crises are upon him and it is hard to say which one is the more terrible. The death of minister T.M. Jacob,who represented the Kerala Congress faction going under his own name in the UDF ministry,is nothing less than a time bomb with a short fuse. Jacob had barely managed to scrape through in his home constituency Piravam with a paltry majority of 157 votes. His rival M.J. Jacob of the LDF and he both belong to the Jacobite (Patriarch) faction of the Syrian Church which has a strong presence in the constituency. The by-election to fill T.M. Jacob’s vacancy is going to be an inch-to-inch fight for the UDF,with the LDF certain to pull out all the stops to wipe out those 157 votes and win it.
In a House of 141,the UDF had 73 seats,including the Anglo-Indian nominee’s,as against the LDF’s 68 — a difference of five and a majority of three. With the Speaker deducted,the difference became four and the majority two. A debacle in the by-election would see the majority nosedive to a simple one. One can only imagine what a roller-coaster ride life is going to be for the Chandy ministry then.
The Jacob faction of the Kerala Congress is as notorious as the other Kerala Congress factions for internal bickering — and rock-bottom levels of political morality. With Jacob gone,the Piravam seat is going to be all the more shaky. T.M. Jacob’s party has declared his son Anoop,a young man new to politics,as the candidate in the coming by-election. He will most probably face his father’s old rival,M.J. Jacob,a battle-scarred veteran.
If sudden death is one crisis,resurrection is the other and perhaps more fearsome one. R. Balakrishna Pillai,chief of the Kerala Congress faction bearing his name and a member of the UDF,who was undergoing a one-year prison term on corruption charges,has been released from jail two months ahead of schedule under a general amnesty tailored for the purpose. Thanks to him,around 2,500 happy jailbirds are laughing all the way to the next scene of action.
Pillai’s imprisonment was a record of sorts because he was the first Kerala minister to be caught on corruption and sentenced by a court. But he also holds another record: of the less than 10 months he spent under the one-year sentence,he was actually in jail only for about two months,that too in an intermittent manner. For the rest,he lived happily in the luxury suite of a super-specialty hospital. The silver lining is that with this kind of a model in hand,it should be possible for Kerala to open a new medical tourism front for sentenced politicians of India and the world. I,for one,would be abysmally thrilled to meet Slobodan Milosevic in my favourite hospital!
Imprisoned Pillai couldn’t contest the last elections and his son B. Ganesh Kumar,a popular movie-actor,was re-elected and became a minister in the Chandy ministry. If there is one thing Pillai loves above everything else,it is power. During the previous UDF ministry,in a memorable testing of the filial bond,Pillai had unseated son Ganesh Kumar from his ministerial post and occupied it himself. Even from within the jail — rather hospital — Pillai had been stirring the political cauldron in a big way. Now that he is out,UDF politics must get ready for any eventuality. He is going to move heaven and earth to get to the chair his son is again seated on.
The grapevine says that another UDF MLA — God forbid — is grievously ill. The chief whip and chief loud-mouth of the UDF,P.C. George of the Kerala Congress,could face disqualification if the charge against him of holding dual office is upheld. And,finally,only Guruvayoorappan,the Lord who knows many Malayali secrets,will know if the CPM will decide to play its power-cards after its state conference in February 2012. And that could lead to some big-time war-games.
Paul Zacharia is a Malayalam writer
express@expressindia.com
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