Consultation before decisions and unity among state leaders are two key factors for the Congress to strengthen its position in Kerala ahead of the upcoming local body polls and the Assembly elections next year, said senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala.
He also said the people of Kerala want the Congress-led opposition to step up its attack on the “unpopular LDF government” led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
The senior Congress leader admitted that the party not having a chief ministerial candidate could “be a natural question” of the voters when the other side has a face like Vijayan. “Congress has a system in which we never put forward a face. The elected members and the party high command decide who would lead the party-led government,” Chennithala said in the Varthamanam podcast of The Indian Express Malayalam, which launched its second edition on Sunday.
Asked about the numerous chief ministerial aspirants, Chennithala, who is himself being considered a possible candidate for the top post if the Congress-led UDF comes to power, said, “All are important leaders and the party should be brought to power with all these leaders. You are right, there should be unity in our party. Everyone should work for it. Local body elections are coming up and they will be followed by the Assembly elections. Everyone should work together as one unit.”
“Ever since I was removed from the Leader of Opposition position in the Assembly, I have not spoken anything against the party leadership. I always stand with the positions taken by the leadership. But what we need is proper consultation.
There was consultation between me and (former CM) Oommen Chandy and things were smooth. Now there is no group, there are leaders… The functioning style should be such that there is proper consultation, everyone should sit together and take decisions unitedly. If that happens, there won’t be any issue,” he said.
Chennithala, who was replaced by V D Satheesan as Leader of Opposition after the 2021 Assembly election in which the Congress and the UDF faced an unexpected debacle in the state, said as LoP “he had not left any stone unturned”. According to him, the defeat was due to an unprecedented situation (Covid-19 outbreak) where the people saw the government as a “messiah” while no one else got a chance to work on the ground.
“As an LoP my performance was assessed and appreciated by people. I performed as an efficient leader of the opposition who relentlessly took on the government. (I) had forced the government to take U-turn in a number of decisions that would have gone against the people. We had the responsibility of pointing out the mistakes of the government and correcting them,” Chennithala said.
He said he was removed from the LoP position without any warning. “It was quite unnatural. After the results came, I told Oommen Chandy that I wanted to quit as the LoP, but he said I should not. The MLAs with him and those who were with me constituted the majority. We asked (AICC general secretary, organisation) K C Venugopal — Oommen Chandy went to his residence and asked him whether there was any such instruction from the central leadership. We told him that I was ready to quit, but we were not told about any such plan. But they (central leadership) announced V D Satheesan as LoP. I did not make any fuss because I am a party man,” he said, adding that Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi spoke to him after the announcement.
“I have never spoken about it because I am a disciplined soldier of the party and I will not create any problem (for the Congress). I believe the decision (to remove him as LoP) was taken because the party faced a debacle in the election.”
Chennithala said the Opposition has worked well in the last five years but more needs to be done. “In the last five years, the Opposition, including me, did what we could. But it’s true that people wanted us to do more because it’s (Pinarayi-led LDF) an unpopular government, an unpopular chief minister. No matter how many agitations we do, people want us to do more,” he said.
The former state minister, who had led a revolt against former Congress chief minister K Karunakaran in the eighties, said he “regrets” the stand that he and two other party leaders took against Karunakaran’s move to promote his children in the party as it has become a common practice in political parties today.
“I often felt it was not needed. Now we see everyone in every party is trying to push their children. But the issues we raised then were relevant at that time.”