Kerala awaits May 4, but the suspense period reflects on set precedents, use of power
Thiruvananthapuram: With Kerala waiting for the vote counting day on May 4, the electoral suspense may be overwhelming, but is marked by an intriguing question — what happens to the precedents set over a decade by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan?
If Vijayan secures a rare third term, continuity is the obvious storyline.
But if power shifts to the Indian National Congress-led UDF, the spotlight will swiftly turn to whether those very precedents, once criticised, suddenly become acceptable tools of governance.
Take the now-defunct Wednesday post-cabinet media briefing. For decades, it was a ritual that symbolised accessibility. Vijayan scrapped it, replacing routine engagement with calibrated communication.
He also put an end to the culture of frequent “sound bites”, choosing instead to speak on his own terms.
Critics cried opacity, but his supporters called it discipline.
The irony? Should a Congress chief minister adopt the same approach, the decibel levels of criticism may depend less on the practice and more on the practitioner.
Then there is the matter of travel.
Former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy famously avoided frequent foreign trips, quipping he did not want to be “haunted and hunted”.
Vijayan flipped that script, undertaking multiple overseas visits pitched as investment drives.
The Opposition derided these as excessive, even coining political punch lines around imported ideas like the much-trolled “room for river” concept post-Netherlands visit. Yet, if a future Congress regime embarks on similar outreach, will it be rebranded as global engagement?
Perhaps the most tangible precedent is logistical, the use of helicopters for intra-state travel. When Vijayan became the first chief minister, he used to regularly fly on a chopper.
With official figures indicating Rs 46.36 crore already spent, despite Kerala’s strained finances, and a standing arrangement with a Delhi-based operator, the optics have been a political lightning rod. The Left defended it as administrative efficiency, the Opposition called it extravagance.
The real test will come if a non-Left chief minister steps into the same chopper. Will the narrative hover or nosedive?
Leader of Opposition in the Kerala Assembly V.D. Satheesan has already signalled a reset of sorts, promising that a UDF chief minister would meet the media at least once in ten days.
It’s a subtle acknowledgement that optics matter and those precedents can be selectively embraced or quietly discarded.
Kerala’s political folklore has long carried a wary observation: what is governance when done by the CPI(M) risks becoming controversial when mirrored by the Congress party.
As the state waits with fingers crossed, that line may soon face its most rigorous field test, not in rhetoric, but in practice. Because in Kerala, power doesn’t just change hands.
It rewrites the rulebook, sometimes using the very same ink.