In 2021, LDF broke the long cyclical electoral trend of Kerala voting out every incumbent government by scoring two consecutive victories. This election is being closely watched to see whether the state’s electorate will return to the trend of junking the incumbent or will it make it again a style of rejecting the Opposition’s claim. This makes the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government’s task of bucking the 10-year incumbency issues to score a hattrick victory a challenging task and yet provides fuel to its ambition to create poll history of sorts. For the Congress and UDF, this election is nothing short of a mission for regaining the lifeline through a victory by averting a third consecutive defeat that can sink the front deeper into crises.
ADMIN DELIVERY VS ANTI-INCUMBENCY
This election is being fought on two contrasting political planks and narratives. UDF is projecting “the need for a change” as its major electoral plank while trying to tap into the LDF regime’s decade-long incumbency issues, raising Sabarimala gold heist case, and by alleging that the Pinarayi regime failed to deliver on many of its promise and ended up with misrule. UDF is also flaunting its set of ‘guarantees’, including promises to make free rides for women in buses and a monthly stipend for girl students besides a state-paid family health insurance.
LDF’s poll pitch is broadly based on a twin-strategy: First, of electorally hard-selling the state government’s bouquet of social welfare schemes, including monthly pensions, that virtually reach every family, besides showcasing infrastructure development and communal harmony. To reinforce its appeal, the government has enhanced the amount of some welfare pensions before the election announcement. Second, the LDF is betting on the capacity of its sitting MLAs, majority of whom have been fielded again even by overlooking age/cap exemptions, to hold on to their respective turf with the chief minister taking the initiative to complete a slew of their promised local projects ahead of polls.
While UDF got off with candidate selection with some hiccups here and there, the CPI-M faced an unusual situation of four of its former functionaries entering the fray as Opposition-backed independents.
PINARAYI VS PINARAYI VS COLLECTIVE UDF
Pinarayi Vijayan, the only chief minister with two consecutive terms in Kerala, is at the centre of this election, both as LDF’s reigning ‘Captain’ and UDF’s prime target of criticisms. His experience in electoral combat, stature and total grip on the CPI-M and LDF, makes the sitting CM the inevitable engine to which the entire LDF is clinging on in this election where the fate of the only surviving Left government of the country and thus the Left politics is at stake. At the ripe age of 80, Pinarayi is spearheading the LDF campaign with characteristic aggression in a state which once voted his party colleague VS Achuthanandan to the CM post at the age of 83.The UDF’s electoral pitch is projecting Pinarayi as the symbol of incumbency, fatigue while accusing him of being “rough”, “autocratic” and “compromised”. While this ‘Pinarayi Vs Pinarayi’ discourse evokes contrasting emotions from the electoral gallery, it also raises questions on who the UDF face is to challenge the Communist helmsman. Here, the Congress, and UDF, is playing defensive, due to lack of leaders like AK Antony and the late Oommen Chandy among the current crop of Congress leaders to match Pinarayi’s experience and standing, and also due to a lack of consensus on who will be the UDF chief ministerial face. While the Congress has taken the alibi of fighting the election ‘under the collective leadership’, saying the CM face will be decided only post poll, 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 aspirants. While LDF faces the task of softening the edges of the Pinarayi plank, UDF has to keep the front united by navigating through the clashing individual ambitions and plots within.
‘DEALS’ TO NAVIGATE SOCIAL EQUATION
The Congress allegation of “a LDF-BJP secret deal” and Left’s counter charge of “a Jamaat-e-Islami-Congress-Indian Union Muslim League nexus” has sharpened the electoral fight as both Fronts are maneuvering Kerala’s delicate social mix with about 56% Hindus, 26% Muslims and 18% Christian (as per last census).
While the Congress-IUML partnership mostly gives UDF an upper hand in the Malabar region of North, the battle royale will be fought in the central and southern parts that usually decide the winner. Whether a larger Muslim consolidation behind the UDF will rally a larger social coalition or lead to counter-rallying, and how the Christian belts vote this time, are being closely watched by the two rival sides just as how the BJP fares in the ring and whose votes it nets.
TALE OF DATA
The data of the last two decades’ Kerala assembly elections shows the LDF scoring big in victories — 99 out of 140 in 2021, 91 in 2016 and 98 in 2006 and losing narrowly (68 in 2011) where as UDF winning narrowly —72/140 in 2011 —and losing badly — 41 in 2021, 47 in 2016 and 42 in 2006. While these numbers give hope to the Left that they can survive anything short of an electoral rout, the UDF is hoping for an “anti-incumbency wave” to cut through the LDF shock absorbers. Whose hopes will take wing, voters will decide on April 9.
