THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was the late Marxist ideologue and social critic M N Vijayan who said that resignation was also a political activity. With the resignation of R Selvaraj from the membership of the Assembly as well as from the party, he was trying to make a political statement that the degeneration of the strongest cadre party in the state had become unbearable even to the insiders.
The decision has turned out to be a rude jolt to the LDF leadership which was trying evolve all possible strategies to ensure the defeat of the UDF in the Piravom byelection. Selvaraj has alleged that the Thiruvananthapuram district leadership of the party which was reveling in the luxury of promoting mafia gangs, power brokers as well as the affluent sections of society, wanted to end him politically. In spite of his rather impressive victory at Neyyattinkara, where he reluctantly contested after being denied a ticket at Parassala where he had a sizable following, the party had no qualms in removing him from the area committee and from the list of delegates to the state conference.
But, according to CPM district secretary Kadakampally Surendran, it was Selvaraj’s open statement through the media as well as that of his friends that he was shifted to Neyyattinkara with the aim of ensuring his defeat which had its impact at Parassala. “At least 250 to 500 voters had believed Selvarj’s complaint and they might have voted against the LDF candidate. That’s why we always said that party candidate at Parassala was deliberately defeated,” Surendran said. Anavoor Nagappan lost the Parasala seat by just 505 votes.
The CPM state leadership has also been confronted with a big question. Why is it that all those who decide to resign from the party belong to minority communities?
Is the party paying the price for its political gambling by promoting all those fortune seekers with an eye on the vote bank of minorities? Or is it impossible for the minorities to stay in a Communist party for a long time with a conscience that prompts to speak the truth? Or is it all because of the evil designs of the UDF think-tanks who have allegedly laid a booby-trap to ambush the LDF bandwagon to sustain the government which is limping forward on wafer-thin majority?