Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will embark on a 24-day State-wide tour on March 30 to attempt to infuse more energy into the Left Democratic Front’s (LDF) Lok Sabha election campaign.
Mr. Vijayan hopes to mount an electioneering blitz to thwart rival campaigns focusing on the perceived disadvantages of incumbency in the State.
He reportedly seeks to cast protecting democracy at the centre of the State’s political conversation to eclipse rival talking points.
The LDF seeks to make the Lok Sabha polls a referendum on the “existential peril Sangh Parivar forces pose” to the country’s secular and federal foundations if they ascend to power at the centre for a third consecutive time.
Mr. Vijayan will have three campaign stops characterised by public rallies and voter interactions in each LS constituency.
The LDF also aspires to build on the momentum created by Mr. Vijayan’s anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act rallies and the State cabinet’s public outreach and grievance redressal programme, NavKerala Sadas.
In an overwhelmingly secular State with a sizeable number of minorities, an estimated 44% of the population as per the 2011 census, the LDF wants to crystallise the palpable public disquiet about the ethnic violence in Manipur, the CAA, NCR, Triple Talaq and Uniform Civil Code into pro-ruling front votes.
The LDF desired to frame the elections as a choice between secular democracy and the Sangh Parivar brand of “Hindu majoritarian fascism”, which allegedly seeks to relegate minorities, backward classes and Dalits as second-class citizens.
The LDF calculates the gambit will banish the perceived disaffection with the State government’s helplessness to clear the backlog of welfare pensions, inability to redeem roads in disrepair, failure to mitigate human-wildlife conflict, and other parochial issues, such as cooperative bank corruption, to the back burner.
The LDF also assumes that the Enforcement Directorate’s notice against Mr. Vijayan’s daughter and the agency’s repeated summons to T. Thomas Isaac, the LDF’s LS candidate from Pathanamthitta constituency, would serve as the backbone of the ruling front’s case that the BJP had subverted the Central agencies, including the Income Tax department, to target political rivals and their families.
It reportedly calculates that the recriminatory campaign unleashed by Congress and BJP against CPI(M) leaders and their families might emerge as a political strength for the ruling front at the hustings.
The third and final leg of Mr Vijayan’s LS campaign, which will conclude three days before the polls on April 23, aims to re-energise the coalition of forces that powered the LDF to victory for a second consecutive term in the 2021 Assembly elections.
