Kerala Assembly Shames Democracy

If the state government was adamant, the opposition was rowdy. And both were high on histrionics and unseemly conduct

“Parliament is simply a costly toy of the nation,” Mahatma Gandhi had said. The same is true for an Assembly in a state. One wonders if he would have reiterated his stand on looking at what happened at the Kerala Assembly yesterday. The scenes that one witnessed there will make none contest that claim of the Mahatma.

What happened in the Assembly was a result of nothing but an unquenchable ego of the United Democratic Front (UDF), the ruling coalition led by the Congress Party, and the Left Democratic Front (LDF), the opposition led by the CPI(M).

Having been satisfied prima facie that Finance Minister KM Mani had taken a bribe of Rs 1 crore from a bar hotel owner, the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau of the state had early last December registered a case against him. With this, the opposition’s demand for his resignation gained momentum. Since then, they have been vehemently pressing for his resignation, and asking Chief Minister Oomen Chandy to sack him from the Cabinet. The government maintained that registration of an FIR did not make him guilty or culpable.

As the day of the presentation of the state Budget drew close, the LDF made it clear that they would not allow Mani to present the document in the House. We cannot let a corrupt man present a state Budget in the House; the chief minister can ask anyone else to present it — was the stand to which the LDF stuck.

On Thursday when it became known that the LDF were resolute in not even letting the finance minister enter inside the House, the government took an unprecedented decision. It decided that all its members would spend the night inside the Assembly! The opposition not only aped the treasury benches, but it also decided to block all doors to the House so that Mani could be physically prevented from entering the House. They even instructed their women MLAs to round off the finance minister. The government, taking this for a challenge, asked its MLAs to foil the opposition’s bid. The chief minister wrote to Speaker N Sakthan that the finance minister’s place be moved from the usual first row to the third row so that he could be prevented from any assault planned by the opposition.

Thursday night, the television debates moved from their studios to ‘ground zero’ — the Legislative Assembly complex in Thiruvananthapuram. Representatives from the opposition parties were proudly sharing their modus operandi as to how they would prevent the tabling of the Budget. And the ruling coalition MLAs, with equal pride, saying that the literal “tabling” of the Budget by Mani would be their victory, the speech did not matter. The debates gave an insight into what was in store for the next day.

But the Budget day turned out to be worse, a blot on parliamentary politics of the state. The MLAs of the ruling coalition stood as bouncers of night clubs to make way for the safe passage of the finance minister from the door to his chair, and the opposition counterparts tried to take positions so as not to let him enter the House. At each door of the House, the ‘bouncers’ and ‘pouncers’ stood menacingly. And when the alarm bell rang, alerting for the beginning of the session, the finance minister was seen entering the House surrounded by a dozen of watch-and-ward officials from the back door. The opposition MLAs rushed there and forced the minister to retreat.

Soon a group of MLAs ran to the podium of the Speaker and blockaded his entry, too. A few of them pushed down his chair. Later, with the help of the watch and ward staff, the Speaker entered the hall and, using hand gesture, signalled to the finance minister to table the Budget. Mani then did what would quench his and the government’s ego: he tabled the Budget and read some lines from it for about 11 minutes.

Those 11 minutes showcased the worst kind of scenes that the House has ever witnessed. The MLAs were shouting at the podium of the Speaker; one of them climbed on his table, others damaged things lying or installed on his table including a computer. Another group threw bits of paper at the finance minister. One tried to jump from the top of a table over the barricade formed by the watch and ward staff and, in the process, showed his underwear. A group of women MLAs ran to the chief minister as if to attack him, but were blocked and manhandled by some ruling party MLAs. One of them accused a woman MLA of biting his hand, refuting which she questioned why she was manhandled by him when there were lady guards for that purpose.

Another lady MLA accused a ruling party legislator of abusing her with a reference to her caste. As soon as Mani ended his speech, the ruling party MLAs shouted to say they were “victorious” and distributed sweets!

What was happening outside the House was no less dramatic. Members of the communist parties along with Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha members were hurling stones at the policemen. The police retaliated by using water cannons, tear gas shells and later lathis. A member of the communist party died of a heart attack while many were injured. Two government vehicles were burnt, too.

Still, after all these unprecedented and repugnant events inside the Assembly and outside on a Budget Day, the ‘leaders’ of all parties involved continued the fight, claiming “victory” was theirs! The ruling party MLAs were heard saying that the finance minister did table the Budget and even read parts of it, the opposition maintaining that the Speaker did not say, “Order, order!” which is usually said before the start of a session, and that he did not sit in the chair and ask the finance minister to present the Budget and, therefore, technically the Budget was not presented, and thus they had ‘won’. And all this was shamelessly said live on Malayalam news channels.

Meanwhile, the finance minister unabashedly read out his Budget speech in more detail in a press conference inside the media room of the Assembly. He said that the BJP and the communists wanted to produce a few martyrs on this day, but were unsuccessful in their attempt. He added that he was disappointed for not being able to visit the church before coming to the House to table the Budget.

Blaming the opposition, the chief minister said it was a “black day in the history of Kerala Assembly”. What he forgot was the fact that it was his power lust that led to this “black day”. The FIR lodged against Mani was serious enough to remove the ally in the coalition from the chief minister’s Cabinet; he feared that the removal would lead to the withdrawal of support from Mani and his eight MLAs which, in turn, would lead to the fall of the government that stands on a slender majority.

The opposition had diluted its initial stand; it had only demanded that Mani not be allowed to present the Budget. But there is no denying the fact that the Communists’ conduct was despicable. They were egos of the government and the opposition alike that marked the shameless scenes in the political history of Kerala yesterday.

The act has shocked and shamed the people Kerala who voted them to power. That these MLAs should be called ‘leaders’ brings utter disgrace to Indian democracy. And, as if all this drama were not enough, the LDF has called for a state-wide hartal, a complete shutdown from 6 AM to 6 PM, on Saturday. This highlights their brazen attitude: the voters in the state have no option but to be governed either by a Congress-led or a Communist-led government. When people are fed up with one, the other is voted to power in the next election; and, for quite some time now, these two parties have been ruling the state one after the other.

The BJP has never been able to secure even one seat in the state Assembly. No other party has the organisation or resources to successfully contest an election. The Congress and the communists are aware of this political reality, and this political helplessness of the people breeds the two players’ brazenness. Until this political vacuum is filled, people in “God’s own country” will live as political slaves under the tyranny of a bipolar polity.