The most keenly watched electoral battle in Kerala is not that involving Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor or those involving Congress heavyweights P.C. Chacko or K.V. Thomas.
What Kerala and, perhaps, the Left leadership across the country, are eagerly waiting to see is the outcome in Kollam, where two Left allies at the national level are involved in a pitched, unpredictable battle — that between Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member M.A. Baby and Revolutionary Socialist Party central committee member N.K. Premachandran.
If Lok Sabha elections were held in February and all had gone well in the ties between the two parties in what could be called an “other-things-remaining-the-same” scene, Mr. Premachandran would probably have been running around the constituency and soliciting votes for Mr. Baby. Or, perhaps, the other way round. But, the ironies of electoral politics being what they are, the two are now engaged in a bitter race, leaving the traditional pro-Left voters in Kollam a confused lot.
It is the story of Left solidarity gone awry, of the RSP choosing to walk out of the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) over “ill-treatment” by the CPI(M), choosing to join the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and contest under its banner, even as it remains a member of the Left Front (LF) in West Bengal and at the national level. When partings become bitter, the mutual recriminations acquire a sharper edge. Although Mr. Baby and Mr. Premachandran, as affable as they are, have stuck fast to norms of civility in their exchanges, tempers of the workers appear to be fraying at the seams in the constituency, leaving many fellow travellers of the Left sad and confused.
“You don’t understand our dilemma. Both are my friends and so are their workers. It will be a difficult choice for many of us here. And, then, it will have to be a political choice,” says Sivachidambaram, singer and cultural activist.
His dilemma is something that the average Congress worker in neighbouring Pathanamthitta constituency also experiences. For, in the fray here is an AICC member of long vintage, Peelipose Thomas, and his former party colleague and incumbent MP, Anto Antony. Mr. Thomas is now an Independent candidate sponsored by the CPI(M) and is engaged in a very close fight with Mr. Antony. He decided to walk out of the Congress, of which he was the District Congress Committee president for long, alleging ill-treatment by the party leadership. He had contested three times from the Ranni Assembly constituency, but was unsuccessful, reportedly powerful sections within the party pulled the carpet from under his feet every time he was in the fray.
The break-up came when Mr. Thomas joined the popular stir against the controversial Aranmula greenfield airport, inviting the wrath of the local party leadership. If, in Kollam, the Congress pulled out its incumbent to accommodate the RSP man, in Pathanamthitta, the opposite happened with the CPI(M) receiving Mr. Thomas with open arms and fielding him against Mr. Antony, again leaving the voters with a difficult choice.
