The 'hot air' balloon that Kerala's opposition leader V D Satheesan had set free, many feel with the intention of insulting Thiruvananthapuram MP and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, seems to have gradually settled into some obscure corner. Just when it seems Tharoor has emerged stronger, it looks like Satheesan has indirectly thrown a new challenge at Tharoor.
After the police listed Latin Archbishop Fr Thomas J Netto himself as the prime accused in the violence that broke out at Vizhinjam on November 26, Satheeshan, Opposition leader and Congress MLA from Paravur, was quick to paint Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan as Adani's flunkey.
"This is unheard of. Will the police take action against the Chief Minister and party secretary when CPM workers go on strike," Satheesan said on November 27, Sunday, of the police move to list 50 top priests of the Latin Archdiocese, including the Archbishop, in the FIR.
"This move of the police is a clear sign that it has now come to a stage where the Pinarayi ministry is willing to do anything for Adani," the opposition leader said. He termed as "grave" the Latin Church's charge that the LDF government had hatched a conspiracy to suppress the agitation by force.
Political observers say Satheesan's sharp and scathing attack is directed not just against the Pinarayi ministry but also at Tharoor. "By launching an all-out attack against the Pinarayi government, Satheesan is actually asking Tharoor to take a position on the issue," a top KPCC executive said.
One of the biggest grouses of local Congress leaders against Tharoor is that he is soft on Pinarayi Vijayan. "Even at the height of the K-Rail agitation, Tharoor had only nice words to say about Pinarayi Vijayan," the KPCC member said.
In the anti-port agitation at Vizhinjam, too, Tharoor's views are in sync with that of Pinarayi Vijayan. Like the Chief Minister, the Thiruvananthapuram MP is also against stopping the port construction. The protesters want the work to stop till an expert committee on the effects of the construction on the coast submits its report. The government had formed the expert committee but has refused to stop construction.
After his initial visits to the Vizhinjam protest venue, Tharoor did not seem eager, like the official Congress party, to express solidarity with the agitating fishermen.
Now with the LDF government stepping up the heat on the Latin Church as opposed to just the fishermen, it looks like Tharoor has no choice but to make his stand clear. Primarily, as Thiruvananthapuram MP he cannot ignore a community, and its spiritual leaders, that had always stood behind him like a rock. The Latin Church is so enraged that one of the top priests, Fr Theodacious D'Cruz, went on to say that Kerala has the worst Chief Minister in history.
Responding to the police move to vilify the Church has also become important in the new battle for leadership space that Tharoor is waging within the Kerala unit of the Congress. His baiters in the party argue, not without reason, that Tharoor does not want to soil his feet in the slush of local politics, and has carefully crafted a statesman-like aura for himself.
The Congress faction led by Satheeshan has already dared Tharoor to immerse himself in local struggles that the Congress has a stake in. Tharoor proved himself equal to the task when he visited the venue where Congress councillors were staging an indefinite protest against the Thiruvananthapuram mayor.
In tongue-in-cheek fashion he even reminded the party, especially Satheesan, that he was the first to call for Mayor Arya Rajendran's resignation. It is another matter that even then he had shied away from a poser that suggested that he was unwilling to criticise Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Framing a politically smart response that will endear himself more to the Congress party workers in the Vizhinjam issue, without hurting his pro-development image, will not be as easy for him as wading into the anti-Mayor struggle.
In the Mayor issue, even if he had never visited the protest venue, Tharoor at least could claim that he was the first to call for the Mayor's ouster. But in Vizhinjam, Tharoor has never given the impression that his heart was with the agitating fishermen. At best, he had played a mediatory role, asking the LDF government not to use force against the protesters. There is also a growing suspicion of Tharoor, especially among the Latin community, as he is perceived to be close to Gautam Adani.
It is in this context that Tharoor faces this political challenge. The Church has alleged a Pinarayi-Adani conspiracy to repress the agitation. The Congress party, through the opposition leader, has officially taken the line that the LDF government was attempting to crush a struggle for existence for the benefit of Adani.
The ball is now in Tharoor's court. He has a better public platform than twitter to forcefully articulate his mind on the issue. He is the only Congress speaker the government has invited to speak at a scientific seminar organised in Thiruvananthapuram on November 29 to remove doubts about the Vizhinjam port project.
Here, in the presence of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, his competitors within the party are expecting him to come clear on the issue.
