Few will have sympathy for CPI(M) leader M M Mani, arrested in connection with his confession that his comrades had killed three Congress workers in Idukki district in the Eighties. It is a fitting reply to the politics of murder the CPI(M) has been indulging in some parts of the state. Curiously, he made the statement less than a month after T P Chandrasekaran was hacked to death in Kozhikkode district. Instead of cooperating with the police, he tried to evade arrest. Even so ‘Operation Ringtone’, under which he was arrested, had all the marks of making a mountain out of a molehill.
The state government had a purpose in dramatising Mani’s arrest because it wants to keep the public gaze away from the rampant fighting within the Congress and the constant bickering in the ruling coalition. The attempt to implicate former chief minister V S Achuthanandan in a case of ‘corruption’ is also part of the same strategy. Given the fact that he had pursued the corruption cases against some UDF leaders, including former minister R Balakrishna Pillai, who was punished by the apex court, the UDF wants to get even with him.
Obsessed as the UDF government is in sending Achuthanandan to jail and involved as its leaders are internecine quarrels, it is no surprise that governance has become a casualty. A year after it came to power, the Oommen Chandy government has little to claim except that it managed to win two by-elections and hang on to power. No less a person than defence minister A K Antony has publicly mentioned that while he had no difficulty in bringing central investments to the state during the LDF regime, he did not get the same cooperation from the UDF government. Those who expected the UDF leaders to introspect were surprised to find them making veiled attacks on Antony. Alas, the victims are the people of the state.