No CM face, UDF will fight Kerala polls under collective leadership: Congress leader V D Satheesan

“There is no dispute over a CM candidate… If I am put forward as the CM candidate, the UDF will not win, because my focus will shift. My focus should only be on bringing the UDF back to power,” Satheesan said on Varthamanam, a weekly podcast by ieMalayalam, the Malayalam news portal of The Indian Express.

Last week, the Congress high command held a meeting of its Kerala leaders in Delhi, where they were told to maintain discipline, toe the party line and not voice their personal opinions in public. This came days after senior Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor said on another show of Varthamanam that the party needed to have a face, and to attract votes beyond its committed support base to avoid a third successive defeat in Kerala. Tharoor gave his own example as a leader who had managed to expand his vote share beyond the party’s.

Admitting that there are still “groups” in the state Congress and that their “excessive influence” was one reason for the party’s defeat in the 2021 Assembly election, Satheesan claimed that he had succeeded in conveying to workers that the party came first, before everything else.

“I am the first CLP (Congress Legislature Party) leader who does not have a group of my own. We did not try to demolish the groups, but the groups will destroy the party. We have created awareness that no group is above the party. Groupism also stymied potential leaders… we have had bitter experiences in our younger days. I myself lost many positions at the last minute. It’s not possible to do these things now,” Satheesan said.

Suggesting that he was a tough taskmaster, Satheesan, 60, added that the work culture in the Congress in Kerala had changed. “If you are given a responsibility, you have to take care of it… I am trying to build a culture that was absent in the Congress, which damaged the party gravely.”

Satheesan lauded Congress leader and former Kerala MP Rahul Gandhi for taking the lead in fighting the BJP on issues such as secularism and the idea of India. However, he admitted, power was a necessary fuel for political parties.

“The Opposition’s fight against populism and hypernationalism is not simple… That’s where Rahul Gandhi’s leadership is relevant. It’s a fight without any compromise. Sometimes I feel he does not fight for power, but for change. It has an ideological frame and a base,” Satheesan said, adding that this is a fight that has to be fought. “If the Congress also surrenders, India will not exist… There should be an idea of India.”

But, he added, “political parties need power too”. “If my fight here (in Kerala) is limited to an ideological battle between the Congress and the Communist party, it does not mean anything… We should improve ourselves as an organisation (even for this fight), keep our allies together and forge a joint movement. It is not impossible, because people in India want this change.”

Satheesan accused Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan of muzzling voices that differed from him in his party CPI(M). “ His is a Stalinist approach,” he said, adding that unlike this, the Congress leadership takes into account different opinions before taking a decision.

“Neither me nor the Kerala PCC president can take a decision and just present it before a party meeting. Many voices would say we have different views. I take things to a committee as a draft, on which discussions are held. It’s not like that in the CPI(M). He (Vijayan) dictates, and there is no voice to say it’s not right. He is another version of (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi… I am not saying he is Modi,” Satheesan said.

The five-term MLA also claimed that Vijayan had been “less confident” in his second term as CM because he had “failed” to choose good faces for the Cabinet or bureaucracy, with “inefficiency to the core… affecting Kerala adversely”.

In the almost hour-long free-wheeling conversation anchored by this reporter, Satheesan, a lawyer by profession, also talked at length about his concerns for the rapid changes sweeping Kerala society, identifying “communalism” and drug abuse as serious issues.

“Pachavellathinu thee pidippikkan kazhiyunna oru vargeeyatha Keralathilundu (There’s such communalism in Kerala… so inflammable… that even water can catch fire),” Satheesan said, adding that Kerala was fast becoming “the drug capital of the country”.

He also said he wants to be different from other leaders in the Congress who are reluctant to make way for youngsters. “I am not one who wants to continue in politics till I die. I have set an age for my retirement… Because I want youngsters to come up… It’s my dream to see a fresh leadership taking over,” Satheesan said.