It was clear the Pinarayi Vijayan government wanted to douse the flames ignited by the gold smuggling scandal before it could consume the Chief Minister's Office. The suspension of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's powerful secretary M Sivasankar, based on the findings of a two-member committee headed by the Chief Secretary, was clearly a move in this direction.
But the questions were only about to begin. The Chief Secretary's probe had found fault with Sivasankar only for recommending Swapna Suresh to a plum post at the Space Park violating the rules of behaviour for civil servants.
Pinarayi's alter ego
Post-suspension, the relentless grilling of Sivasankar by the Customs and National Investigating Agency, and later by the Enforcement Directorate, was a public relations disaster, especially for Pinarayi Vijayan. The bureaucrat was so closely associated with the Chief Minister that it seemed as if the Chief Minister himself was being questioned.
Hints of even graver charges also cropped up, provoking deeper questions of a Chief Minister's control over his officials.
The central investigating agencies (the NIA and ED), while opposing Swapna's bail application, argued before courts that she had a deep influence in the Chief Minister's Office. In fact, the NIA had told the special court that Swapna herself had said she knew the Chief Minister.
From the poor man's pocket
And in between came perhaps the most damning revelation. During interrogation, Swapna had reportedly told Customs officials that the Rs one crore found in her bank locker was the “commission” she had received from a builder, Unitac, for securing for it the contract of a construction project under Life Mission, the LDF's flagship social welfare project.
It is also a mystery how the government failed to notice that Unitac, which did not come under the list of project management consultants (PMCs) approved by the Life Mission, got picked to do the work.
Swapna had opened the locker jointly with a chartered accountant, a friend of Sivasankar's. The chartered accountant told the probe team that he had opened it under Sivasankar's advice. Unitac's owner later said that he had indeed offered Rs one crore as commission to Swapna for the project.
Holiness project
Then, there was the duty-free import of Quran bundles from the UAE that had put higher education minister K T Jaleel in the dock. Serious questions were raised. How could the bundles be taken out of the airport when holy books could not be granted duty exemption clearance under the law? And how could they be transported in a government vehicle?
Since it was known that Swapna and team had used diplomatic bags to smuggle in gold, suspicions were raised about the content of the bundles. Were the holy books a cover to smuggle gold? The mystery deepened when it was revealed that no one had seen the bundles when they were brought to Kerala State Centre for Advanced Printing & Training (C-apt).
Media lynching
Instead of removing the fog of suspicion, the Chief Minister let loose a media diatribe.
He was angered that the media refused to be satisfied with Sivasankar's ouster. He insisted that further questions smacked of a “dubious agenda” to drag the Chief Minister himself into the gold smuggling case.
In the wake of the Chief Minister's harangue, perhaps even emboldened by it, the cyber lynching of journalists who had thrown difficult questions at the Chief Minister became the norm.
Realising that attempts to browbeat the media could backfire, the CPM has now gone back to its old strategy: put the entire blame on Sivasankar and keep the gelled gloss on the Chief Minister intact.
A glossy colour pamphlet, which is being distributed in homes, is the first product of this strategy. The pamphlet essentially says that the LDF government has no connections with the gold smugglers and that it had taken swift action against Sivasankar after it was revealed he had close links to Swapna Suresh. It says that Sivasankar was picked by the Chief Minister to head his office solely on the basis of the bureaucrat's track record.
Sharpshooters
The Chief Minister had earlier given the impression that he was disappointed with Sivasankar's wayward ways but uncharacteristically had also seemed careful not to be harsh on his former blue-eyed boy. The party has now decided to hand over the hatchet job to some of CPM's most sharp-mouthed leaders.
On Monday, PWD minister G Sudhakaran tore into Sivasankar in a way no one in the CPM had done after the scandal broke out. It was also the first time he was conducting a press conference in two years.
Sudhakaran called Sivasankar "traitorous". "He betrayed the trust reposed on him by the Chief Minister. His friendship with Swapna was a shame. He can never be forgiven," Sudhakaran said. "If he was involved in other things, let the central agencies find out. We have nothing to do with him. We have completely disowned him," he added.
Sudhakaran then said the links of the smugglers with the Chief Minister's Office ends with Sivasankar. "The stink is only up to Sivasankar. After that stench had been erased, there is nothing but the fragrance in the Chief Minister's Office," he said.
LDF convener A Vijayaraghavan, too, made a contribution. He said the LDF government did not know that Sivasankar was "such a dangerous guy".
