Skeletons have been tumbling out of the closets of both the rival political formations in Kerala - the ruling Left Democratic Front and the opposition United Democratic Front. No other political party or alliance has so far been able to put up a formidable challenge to unseat either from power. Every alternate Assembly election witnesses one coalition replacing the other. The LDF has been ruling the State for the last one year. And within this period, the CPI(M)-led coalition has been found involved in a plethora of scandals.

The scandals have been exposed even before the so-called honeymoon period has expired. The latest in the series is the bribery exposé. The CPI(M)'s Malayalam daily, Desabhimani, has allegedly accepted a bribe of Rs 1 crore from the owner of a finance company that cheated thousands of its depositors, to help the fly-by-night operator evade the clutches of law. In the second instance, the same newspaper allegedly accepted Rs 2 crore from a lottery baron to bail him out - the man has been absconding.

Desabhimani is the mouthpiece of the CPI(M), the leading partner in the LDF. In both the above instances, the newspaper's manager - a prominent party leader - accepted the cash. One of Kerala's leading dailies, Mathrubhumi, was the first to expose these cases. Interestingly, Mathrubhumi is owned by Mr Virendra Kumar, a Member of Parliament from the JD(S) - also a member of the LDF. So the CPI(M) cannot claim 'political vendetta' to be the motive behind the exposé.

Now the CPI(M)'s Kerala unit has turned hostile to Mathrubhumi, which enjoys both reputation and credibility. The CPI(M) is finding it difficult to evade the consequences of the exposé. Yet, 'shoot the messenger' is the beleaguered CPI(M) leadership's response. Mathrubhumi's owner as well as its editorial staff are being targeted by the State Government.

When the first of the two scandals broke, the CPI(M) sacked the general manager of Desabhimani, Mr K Venugopal, who is close to the party leadership, blaming him alone for accepting the bribe. When the second scandal was exposed, there weren't any scapegoats left.

Initially, the CPI(M) had said the money was accepted in lieu of 'bonds' it had floated to raise capital for the newspaper. But later, it emerged that Desabhimani, as a registered company, was not legally authorised to float bonds in the market without the sanction of the RBI. When no one bought the lame alibi, the party claimed that the money was taken as "advance payment" for advertisements by the dubious company to be published in the newspaper. Even this explanation turned out to be false. Then the money was described as a "loan" for which a receipt had been issued.

When a lawyer approached the vigilance court against the CPI(M), the owner of Desabhimani, the Kerala Government tried to protect itself from an inquiry by claiming that the matter did not merit a probe. But contrary to this claim, the court ruled that the two incidents of receiving money from questionable sources were so serious that it could not reject the contention that the money was indeed paid in return of favours. The court has, therefore, asked the vigilance department to investigate the incidents and report the findings to it.

In order to divert public attention, the ruling party has levelled allegations against Kerala Congress president Ramesh Chennithala that he had allegedly received Rs 10 crore from a finance company, the Himalaya group, whose owners are in custody for the alleged murder of a rival finance company's owner. State Home Minister K Balakrishnan told the Assembly that a former legal adviser to the Himalaya group, Mr MA Hakim, had confessed to the police that the group's owners had paid Mr Chennithala Rs 50 lakhs in cash for a building in Kerala costing Rs 1.5 crore and another in Tamil Nadu worth Rs 8 crore. The reported confession was cited as the basis for ordering a probe against the Congress's State chief.

Unfortunately for the LDF, the attempt by the CPI(M) to implicate its political rivals has caused a backlash: The owner of the Himalaya group told mediapersons - before the police whisked him away - that he had paid money to the CPI(M) leaders in Delhi. He also specified the time and place where the exchange had taken place, but the police did not allow him to elaborate on the details. As the drama unfolds, more mudslinging is likely to take place in the near future.

The Kerala unit of the CPI(M) has never faced cash crunch. Real estate owned by the party in the State is believed to be worth Rs 1,500 crore. This could not have come from the poor workers who, it claims, are its core constituency. So far, the party's leadership has offered no explanation about the sources of the funds with which it has built the huge empire. The latest scandals come on top of several others dating back to the 1990s. The most notorious of all these involved a Canadian firm, which was awarded a contract for retro-fitting the State's powerhouses, ignoring the bid by BHEL for the project.

The Canadian company neither did the retro-fitting properly nor did it fulfil the other commitments it had made in its contract with the State despite taking an advance before starting the work. The finger was then pointed at the then Power Minister, Mr Pinarayi Vijayan, who is now CPI(M)'s State secretary. When the matter came up before the Kerala High Court, the Government counsel claimed that there was no reason for the CBI to intervene. But the court overruled his objection.

The two main scams, in which the CPI(M) is now involved, originate from two businesses - chit funds and lotteries. Notwithstanding the crores of rupees invested in these enterprises and the thousands of people employed in them, these are murky businesses: The Himalaya group's scam, using non-banking finance companies as conduits, and many lottery barons, who indulge in fraudulent printing of tickets, enticing gullible people to make easy money, are cases in point.

And the fraudulent lottery and chit-fund company owners know that there is little political choice in Kerala: As one of the two coalitions is always elected to run the Government, the scamsters keep both the fronts happy to continue with their operations.

There is a saying, "You can fool some people all the time, or all the people some of the time; but you cannot fool all the people all the time." This adage does not apply to Kerala.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, July 27, 2007