Kannur: Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday sought to rally a demoralised CPM cadre of Kannur after the LDF’s crushing Assembly election defeat, striking a defiant yet conciliatory tone, while largely sidestepping mounting criticism against his leadership from within party district committees and secretariats.

In his first public address after the defeat, delivered while inaugurating a party local committee office in Sreekandapuram, the former chief minister and now Leader of the Opposition framed the verdict as the people’s desire for a change in government rather than an ideological rejection of the CPM or a referendum on his 10-year rule.

“The LDF will return to power in Kerala with greater public support and renewed strength. We have overcome many such phases in the past. Nobody should see this defeat as the end of the CPM or the LDF,” Pinarayi said towards the fag-end of his 30-minute speech. The crowd clapped. He then urged the party workers to carry out “disciplined organisational work” to engineer a comeback.

The LDF has been reduced to 35 seats, and the CPM, 26, in the 140-member Legislative Assembly. The front won 99 seats in the 2021 election.

Though district-level review meetings in several parts of the state have reportedly seen unusually sharp criticism over the functioning of the leadership, style of governance and disconnect with the electorate, Pinarayi avoided any direct reference to internal dissent or demands for course correction.

Instead, he sought to reinforce the LDF’s developmental legacy, arguing that Kerala had witnessed broad-based progress over the past decade under Left rule.

“Over the past 10 years, the LDF government took Kerala forward and registered important gains,” he said, listing interventions in health, education, waste management, welfare and infrastructure. "Development was not limited to roads, bridges, overbridges and flyovers," he said. Many important schemes that were launched gained national attention. They were either successfully completed or are progressing well. All of this, he said, was done with the intention of advancing the state. 

He claimed the government transformed the education and health sectors from a “destroyed condition” to a stage where “the world took notice”, while also ensuring that development reached all regions and sections of society. "Despite all that, the people wanted a change in government."

Though the LDF fought the election around the proposition that only the Left could guarantee continuity of Kerala’s development trajectory ('Who else other than the LDF') -- a message built around Pinarayi’s leadership -- the veteran leader softened that line after the defeat.

“In the past 10 years, Kerala was uplifted along those lines. There should be continuity to that. We are not saying only we can ensure that continuity. We are not stubborn about it either,” he said.

He added that the people had voted for a change in government and that the UDF should continue the developmental initiatives launched by the LDF.
“The people’s verdict is out. As part of that verdict, the UDF government should continue the work,” he said, while promising “constructive support” for measures beneficial to the state and strong opposition to policies that hurt public interest.

Pinarayi Vijayan, a CPM politburo member, also moved away from Kerala politics and into familiar ideological terrain by attacking the BJP-led Union government over farmers’ issues, corporate favouritism, welfare dilution and foreign policy.

He accused the BJP of abandoning the poor by weakening the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), which he described as a Left-driven welfare intervention implemented by the UPA-I government "because the Congress depended on Left support".

“It was the Left that proposed the scheme,” he said, adding that Congress later attempted to dilute it and that the BJP now wanted to “fully destroy” it.

To be sure, MNREGS (now renamed as Viksit Bharat - Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin)) was part of the Congress manifesto in 2004, and was the first item on the National Common Minimum Programme of the UPA-I government.

Pinarayi also attacked the BJP over farm distress, rising cultivation costs and alleged proximity to corporate interests, before broadening the speech into criticism of the United States and Israel.

“The world sees Israel as a rogue country. The BJP has close ties with Israel. The Zionists of Israel and the RSS in India are like twins,” he said.

He accused the Union government of surrendering India’s sovereignty to the United States and said India had reached a stage where it required “American permission” before shaping trade ties with other countries.

Even while accepting the Assembly election verdict, Pinarayi repeatedly insisted that the defeat should not be viewed as the beginning of the end for the CPM. “We have overcome similar situations before. No one should see this defeat as the end of the CPM or the LDF,” he said.

He reiterated the same points while delivering the 22nd E K Nayanar memorial talk at Kalliasseri.