When North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un popped up in a CPM flex board in Idukki, one thought it was the result of a local leader’s over-enthusiasm. The party cannot be serious about celebrating a leader who brags he carries the nuclear button in his pocket. The local unit’s move to quickly remove the flex board, explaining that it was put up “by mistake” confirmed this reading.
How wrong we were! That Kim is poised to be the next icon and poster-boy of CPM dawned on us only when Pinarayi Vijayan lavished praise on him. According to the CM, Kim has outdone Communist China in resisting “imperialist United States of America”.
Addressing party district committee members in Kozhikode, Pinarayi reportedly said there is criticism that China’s fight against American imperialism is not up to people’s expectations. North Korea, on the other hand, “has been adopting a tough anti-US stand and has successfully resisted the pressure tactics of the US”.
There you are. Even local party leaders could not see the relevance of Kim. With the anti-imperialistic forces losing steam, with the meticulous liquidation of the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet Union itself, with the decimation of the East European Socialist empires that followed, with the fall of the great wall of Berlin, with the demolition of Lenin statues, with the depiction of Stalin as an autocrat, with the fading of icons such as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, with China competing with the US to become a global economic power, the party in India was at a loss to project a leader with contemporary appeal. Being a global movement, the party cannot march ahead without an international figure to motivate the cadre.
Their (secret) prayers have been answered. Here is the leader they were looking for. Here is one leader who can stand up to the might of the US and match the intimidatory tactics of President Donald Trump. Here is the knight of new-gen revolution! Well, the party has had seasonal icons such as Saddam Hussein, who they used to the hilt in the 1991 district council elections.
It did not matter to the party that he was accused of genocide and had ordered the killing and mass burial of thousands of Kurds and anyone else who dared to question him. All that mattered was immediate harvest of votes. But Saddam ditched them after one season.
Buoyed by the rich dividends, the Left Front went in for fresh elections with almost one year of the E K Nayanar government’s term still remaining and ended up handing over power to the UDF. Though the Left blamed it on the “sympathy wave” following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, it took many years for the blushes to vanish.
Would we see clean-shaven portraits of Kim adorning the walls of University College, Thiruvananthapuram, in place of the walrus-moustached Stalin and the bearded Marx and Engels?
Would we soon see Kim Jong-un study centres or at least a Kim Institute of Nuclear Sciences? Don’t be surprised!
When the tongue turns serpent!
Imagine your tongue growing into a serpent overnight, coiling up all around your neck and giving a venomous strike right on your face. Well, this is the status of “contempo Congress leader” V T Balram, following his “idol-breaking” swipe at A K Gopalan, or plain AKG of the masses. Balram is being thrashed online and offline from inside and outside!
Surprisingly, he is not isolated, yet. There is a view amongst his supporters that it was not an off-the-cuff remark from the suave leader, but his way of hitting back at some mucky jibe against Oommen Chandy in social media.
And even more surprising for the poor Congress worker was the agility with which their own leaders defended AKG and slammed Balram, an agility that was missing when leaders such as Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi were targeted!