Much of the Left still does not understand why they lost Kerala’s mandate |
The most revealing part of the Left's crushing defeat in Kerala has not been the defeat itself. Elections are lost all the time, governments fall, and political moods change. What has truly stood out is the reaction of many leaders of the Communist Party of India-Marxist after the verdict. It has been a spectacle of denial, arrogance and wounded entitlement. Instead of asking why such a massive section of the electorate turned against them, many in the party appear to have settled on a far simpler explanation. The people, according to them, simply got it wrong!
M Swaraj, in his trademark pedantic style, almost seemed to suggest that the electorate lacked the political sophistication to appreciate what the government had supposedly achieved. MM Mani expressed essentially the same sentiment in his usual crass and unfiltered manner. John Brittas wrote an article in The Indian Express that read less like introspection and more like an elaborate exercise in rationalising defeat. The underlying tone in all these reactions was impossible to miss. The people had failed the Left and not the other way around.
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That attitude itself explains a great deal about why the Left lost. This was not merely a vote against a particular government. It was a vote against a style of governance that had become increasingly arrogant, excessively centralised and hopelessly addicted to image management.
Over the past several years, Kerala witnessed the construction of a political personality cult around Pinarayi Vijayan that became impossible to ignore. Massive hoardings, endless newspaper advertisements, and carefully staged publicity........