V S Achuthanandan’s volte-face in the T P Chandrashekharan murder case would not save the Left Democratic Front from a serious debacle in the upcoming Lok Sabha election, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said on Monday. At ‘Janavidhi - 2014,’ the face-to-face programme organised by the Kannur Press Club, he said that VS failed to convince people about the reasons behind the change of his mind.“Any leader has a responsibility to explain and convince the public on the reasons and context in which he had to change his stand on a particular issue. VS failed to convince people in this regard. He could not even convince the people who supported him so far,” Oommen Chandy said referring to V S Achuthanandan’s recent reversal of opinion in the TP Chandrashekharan murder case. The elections would deliver the people’s verdict on the murder politics perpetrated by the CPM, Oommen Chandy said.
“The CPM leaders shy away from discussing Kerala politics in the election campaign, as they fear it would backfire on them,” he added. “When I stated that the election will be a referendum on the performance of the state government, Pinarayi Vijayan criticised me,” Chandy said.
“There is no anti-incumbency factor against the state government in this election and the UDF is on a strong wicket,” he said. However, he evaded a specific reply on whether he would quit as CM if the poll results went against the UDF.
‘No Introspection’
Had the CPM agreed for an introspection by accepting the truthful stance VS adopted earlier on the TP Chandrasekharan murder case, the political scenario in the state would have been cleansed much earlier, Chandy said.
“The tragedy is that the CPM has not yet realised the fact that the people are totally against the politics of annihilating dissent. Instead, the party engaged in attempts to make VS change his stance,” the Chief Minister said.