he campaign for the May 16 Assembly elections is all set to move into the final phase and the coming fortnight should see the rival formations in the fray firing on all cylinders, each statement of their leaders adding to the larger narrative of this election and providing the voters sufficient reasons to make their choices.
But, a close look at the debate so far reveals is the absence of a defining theme, something that would make or break one contender or the other.
The LDF had entered the poll season with its focus on the many corruption charges against the Oommen Chandy governmen, but somewhere that strand appears to have snapped, the focus shifting to the question whether the State should ideally have prohibition in stages or whether it should opt for the less rigorous route of abstention and moving on to ‘politics of murder’ and who cohabited with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or its earlier avatars.
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Interestingly, the debate is not driven entirely by the Opposition, but also by the ruling alliance leadership as the campaign clears the midway mark.
One person who has been trying to pin the ruling alliance to issues of corruption is Leader of the Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan, who has been unsparing in his attack on Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his Cabinet colleagues.
Mr. Chandy, on the other hand, has been focusing all his energies on reminding the voters about the many developmental initiatives of the government and the way it had tried to provide social security cover to the poor and the needy. In the constituencies, candidates of different formations are focused almost entirely on the local-level development questions.
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Focus on corruption
Conceding that there is a dissipation of energies, CPI State secretary Kanam Rajendran told The Hindu that in his view, the LDF should remain focused on the issue of corruption if it was to keep the masses on its side.
“Both corruption and the UDF’s claims about development are core issues. Our attempt should be to expose the UDF on both counts. We need to be focused there,” Mr. Rajendran said.