The newly constituted State committee of the party unanimously elected Pinarayi, secretary for the past 14 years, after his arch enemy and central committee member VS Achuthanandan proposed his name and senior leader T Sivadasa Menon seconded the proposal. The election of 84 members to the State committee also was unanimous, Pinarayi claimed later.
There had not been any doubt at any point on the possibility of Pinarayi’s re-election as secretary as the neo-liberalist faction he headed was in brutal majority in all the committees of the party. The stipulation of the party’s newly formulated rectification document, by which secretaries could not continue for more than three terms, had no relevance in the case of Pinarayi.
Pinarayi used the first Press conference after his re-election to blast the media for the “partisan ways’ in which they had reported the developments in the CPI(M) and its State conference. “It is nothing but absurd,” he said about the media reports that a section of the working report he had presented to the conference had been frozen by the party Politbureau.
“There was a media syndicate (that worked against the Marxists) in Kerala (in 2007-08). It has reappeared now,” Pinarayi said while commenting on the media reports that the Politbureau had on Thursday put a freeze on a section of his working report which was full of personal criticisms against Achuthanandan. “Reports on the freeze are absurd,” he added.
Pinarayi has succeeded in reaffirming his supremacy in the party with the 20th State conference, but even senior leaders are complaining that he and his faction had reduced the entire meet process – which should have focused on issues that challenged the party’s ideological bases – into an occasion for “cheap personal score-settling” with Achuthanandan.
Vijayan, born on May 21, 1944 in a poor proletarian family in Pinarayi in Kannur, known as Kerala’s Marxist heartland, had risen in public life through the communist students movement, youth outfit and the CPI(M). He was elected to the Kerala Assembly in 1970, 1977, 1991 and 1996. In 1996, he became Kerala’s Power minister in the then (late) EK Nayanar government.
It was none less than Achuthanandan himself who had proposed Pinarayi’s name to the top post of the party in 1998 after the death of then secretary Chadayam Govindan. However, the unique friendship between Pinarayi and Achuthanandan ended soon after that and the result was a long and fierce war for supremacy in the party by the factions led by the two.
The biggest blow Pinarayi received in his entire political life was when the CBI named him as seventh accused in the Rs 374.5-crore SNC Lavalin corruption case pertaining to a power deal with the Canadian company when he was minister. Pinarayi’s working report to the State meet held Achuthanandan responsible for trapping him in that case.
The State conference of the CPI(M) also unanimously elected 84 members of the 85-man-strong new State committee by dropping seven members and inducting 12 new faces. Among those dropped was Vijayan-loyalist Gopi Kottamurikkal, who was removed as Ernakulam district secretary on August 1, 2011 after he was accused of indulging in immoral acts at party office.
Among the others who were dropped from the committee was Sarojani Balanandan, widow of E Balanandan, who had opposed the power deal with SNC Lavalin and whose documents on the deal had played a vital role in the entire Lavalin controversy. One seat was left vacant to facilitate Kottamurikkal’s return “as and when he proved" his innocence in the scandal.
VS threatens to quit as Opp leader
The octogenarian central committee member of the CPI(M), VS Achuthanandan, on Friday conveyed to the central leadership his displeasure at the personal attacks against him by the neo-liberalists in the party headed by secretary Pinarayi Vijayan at the State conference in Thiruvananthapuram.
Meeting general secretary Prakash Karat at his hotel room in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday morning, Achuthanandan reportedly told him that it was difficult for him to continue as Opposition leader in the Kerala Assembly in the context of continuing attacks and insults against him in the party. The central leadership reportedly advised him to remain calm.
VS told Karat that the neo-liberalist faction had conspired to mount an attack against him even before the State meet and they had humiliated him publicly by leaking out the working report of the party, which was full of personal criticisms against him, to the media. Achuthanandan is said to have repeated the same complaint to Politbureau member Sitaram Yechuri.
The central leadership, however, asked him not to show haste and to remain calm as the central committee was to meet soon to consider several issues related to the conduct of the State conference. The Politbureau had the other day reportedly intervened to force the State leadership to amend certain portions in the working report that attacked Achuthanandan.
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