The most striking image from the aftermath of the Enforcement Directorate search connected to Pinarayi Vijayan’s daughter, Veena Thaikkandiyil, was not the arrival of central agencies, not the party workers flooding the streets, not even the now familiar led theatre of siege and resistance. It was the silence of V.D. Satheesan. Journalists repeatedly asked the Chief Minister questions. They chased the Congress leadership for reactions. They wanted the usual spectacle that now passes for political communication. But Satheesan simply refused to perform. He spoke little, and most often not at all. Others, like Ramesh Chennithala and K Muraleedharan, addressed the press, while Satheesan stood back and watched the political choreography unfold.

That silence has unsettled the CPI(M) far more than outrage would have. Because Satheesan seems to understand something the party itself does not fully realise. The Enforcement Directorate investigation into the financial dealings surrounding Exalogic and CMRL was politically dangerous to the CPI(M) only as long as it remained a question of alleged corruption, influence, patronage and proximity between political power and corporate interests. The moment the party successfully transformed it into an “attack on Pinarayi Vijayan,” the terrain changed. A wounded cadre suddenly rediscovered emotional purpose.

The CPI(M) had entered this moment politically damaged. The electoral defeat was not merely numerical. Something deeper had happened over the last decade, particularly during the second term of Pinarayi Vijayan. Large sections of ordinary Left workers, sympathisers and voters had become exhausted by the centralisation of power, by arrogance masquerading as political discipline, by the suffocation of inner party criticism, and by the transformation of a communist movement into a tightly controlled leadership ecosystem orbiting one man and his court. Many of them voted for the UDF.

That was the real danger facing the CPI(M). Not the BJP and not the Congress,........

© Mathrubhumi English