CPI(M) leader M.M. Mani, MLA, homespun election rhetoric has often backfired on him.
On Tuesday, another speech he gave in Idukki appeared on track to boomerang on the veteran leader and the ruling party.
Mr. Mani allegedly used an arguably disparaging and blatantly sexist remark to portray the United Democratic Front (UDF) incumbent and the Congress candidate from the Idukki Lok Sabha constituency, Dean Kuriakose, as an ineffectual MP, and an obsessive dandy.
Mr. Mani also allegedly sought to cast aspersions on the moral character of veteran Congress leader P.J. Kurien.
Mr. Mani’s mocking rhetoric had often gotten him into trouble. In 2012, the police arrested Mr. Mani for claiming that the CPI(M) in Idukki had killed several rivals on its hitlist. His often norm-breaking political oratory targetted included Opposition politicians and government officials.
The CPI(M) has defended Mr. Mani’s rustic speech, frequently speckled with bombast and biting humour as typical of a rural high-ranger.
Mr. Mani’s comment drew an indignant riposte from Mr. Kuriakose. He said Mr Mani, as a member of the Cabinet in the previous LDF government, had mutedly assented to laws that imperilled Idukki’s agrarian economy, welfare and development.
Mr. Kuriakose said that Mr. Mani had reverted to insult politics to hide the latter’s complicity in Idukki’s developmental stasis.
Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan said Mr. Mani’s stream of invective against Congress leaders and candidates served a political purpose.
He said the LDF had deployed Mr. Mani as a bullhorn to drown the Opposition’s expose of political and business links between CPI(M) and BJP leaders in Kerala.
Mr. Satheesan alleged that the CPI(M) had tasked Mr. Mani with diverting public attention from the controversy that had weighed on the LDF at the hustings.
He also accused the CPI(M) of conspiring with the BJP to defeat Congress candidates in Thrissur and Vadakara. Both parties were intent on diminishing the Congress.
Mr. Satheesan also reminded the CPI(M) not to crow about defections from the Congress to the BJP. He said Vishwanatha Menon and K.J. Alphonse had quit LDF and joined the BJP when Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was the CPI(M) State secretary.
