Kerala elections: A battle to manoeuvre coalition chemistry, maths of changing milieu
In 2021, the LDF won two consecutive victories, breaking Kerala’s long cyclical electoral trend of voting for all incumbent governments. This election is being closely watched for whether the state’s voters will revert to their tendency to trash the incumbent or turn it back into rejecting the Opposition’s claim. This makes the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government’s task of overcoming 10-year tenure issues to achieve a hattrick victory an uphill task and still fuel its ambition to create some sort of poll track record. For the Congress and the UDF, this election is nothing but a mission to regain a lifeline through victory by averting a third successive defeat that could plunge the front into deeper crises.
EXECUTIVE SURRENDER AND PROVISION AGAINST LIABILITY
This election is being held on two opposing political plans and narratives. The UDF envisages the “need for change” as its main election plank as it seeks to capitalize on the LDF regime’s decade-long tenure problems, raising the Sabarimala gold robbery case and claiming that the Pinarayi regime failed to deliver on most of its promises and ended up with mismanagement. UDF also flaunts a number of its ‘guarantees’, including government-paid family health insurance, as well as promises of free bus rides for women and a monthly stipend for female students.
LDF’s poll presentation is broadly based on a twin strategy: first, to showcase infrastructural development and social harmony as well as make a hard sell to voters on the state government’s bouquet of social welfare schemes, including monthly pensions, reaching almost every family. To strengthen its attractiveness, the government increased the amount of some social pensions before the election announcement. Secondly, the LDF is confident in the capacity of its MLAs, most of whom have re-entered the field ignoring age/limit exemptions, to protect their turf as they take the initiative to complete some of the local projects promised by the chief minister before the elections.
While there were some hiccups in the UDF candidate selection at some places, the CPI-M faced an unusual situation with four of its former functionaries entering the fray as Opposition-backed independents.
PINARAAYI VS PINARAAYI VS BULK UDF
Pinarayi Vijayan, the only chief minister in Kerala to serve two consecutive terms, is at the center of this election as both the current ‘Captain’ of the LDF and the main target of criticism from the UDF. His experience in the election campaign, his reputation and his complete dominance over the CPI-M and the LDF make the incumbent CM the inevitable engine on which the entire LDF depends in this election where the fate of the country’s only surviving Left government and hence the fate of Left politics is at stake. Pinarayi, 80, is spearheading the LDF campaign with characteristic aggression in a state that once elected his party colleague VS Achuthanandan to the CM post at the age of 83. UDF’s election speech projects Pinarayi as a symbol of duty and fatigue, while accusing him of being “rude”, “autocratic” and “conciliatory”. While this ‘Pinarayi vs Pinarayi’ rhetoric evokes conflicting emotions in the electoral gallery, it also raises questions about who the UDF will challenge the Communist helmsman. Here the Congress and the UDF are playing defense due to the lack of leaders with Pinarayi’s experience and stance among the current Congress leaders like AK Antony and the late Oommen Chandy and also the lack of consensus on who will be the chief ministerial face of the UDF. While the Congress claims to be contesting the election “under collective leadership”, saying the CM’s face will be decided only after the polls, the names of Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan, CWC member Ramesh Chennithala and ICC general secretary KC Venugopal are often cited as Congress chief ministerial candidates. While the LDF is faced with the task of smoothing the edges of the Pinarayi board, the UDF has to keep the front together by navigating conflicting individual ambitions and intrigues within it.
‘AGREEMENTS’ TO DIRECT THE SOCIAL EQUATION
The Congress’ allegation of “LDF-BJP collusion” and the Left’s counter-charge of “Jamaat-e-Islami-Congress-India Union Muslim League nexus” have sharpened the electoral battle as both the Fronts maneuver Kerala’s delicate social mix of about 56% Hindus, 26% Muslims and 18% Christians (as per the last census).
While the Congress-IUML partnership will give the UDF the upper hand mostly in the Malabar region of the North, the big battle that usually decides the winner will be fought in the central and southern parts. Whether a greater Muslim consolidation behind the UDF will galvanize a larger social coalition or lead to a counter-rally and how the Christian generations will vote this time around is being closely watched by the two rival parties, as is how the BJP performs in the ring and whose votes it garners.
DATA STORY
Data of Kerala assembly elections of the last two decades shows that LDF has won big – 99 out of 140 in 2021, 91 in 2016 and 98 in 2006 and lost narrowly (68 in 2011), while UDF won narrowly – 72/140 in 2011 – and lost badly – 41 in 2021. 47 in 2016 and 42 in 2006. While these figures give hope to the Left that they can survive in anything short of electoral defeat, the UDF hopes for an “anti-government wave” that will break the LDF shock absorbers. Voters will decide on April 9 whose hopes will gain wings.
