Pinarayi in Poll Position

The local body election results have injected new life into the Left Front election campaign. Can the CPI(M) chief minister ride them to victory?

- Jeemon Jacob

For almost four decades now, Kerala has voted the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and United Democratic Front (UDF) to power alternately. The 2021 assembly election, though, could spring a surprise. The ruling LDF’s surprise performance in the local body election in December (just as everyone thought it was down and out after the gold smuggling scandal and Enforcement Directorate investigations) suggests a change in the script for the assembly election in May. The worry lines are gone and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is back to his imperious self. He is keen that the LDF, led by his CPI(M), consolidate the 40.2 per cent vote share it got in the local body polls (the Congress steered UDF managed 37.9 per cent while the BJP-led NDA got 19 per cent of the vote).

The true Marxist that he is, Pinarayi, now 75, has never believed in fate. Nothing’s come easy for him, which may be why when he was finally chosen to head the LDF government in 2016, he already had a blueprint in mind for his tenure. It helped that, unlike with earlier Left Front regimes, there was little interference from AKG Centre, the state party headquarters. “Pinarayi has had full control over the decisions of his government. No chief minister of Kerala has had such privileges. He has used the opportunity to leave his imprint on the government while also emerging as a sole power centre,” says a former state chief secretary, on condition of anonymity.