Kerala seldom fails to surprise. After the stupendous victory of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the party took a policy decision that, with the exception of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the rest of the cabinet will comprise new faces. Not a single outgoing minister is part of the new government, not even the Health Minister KK Shailaja who had become the face of the State as she handled the COVID-19 pandemic and drew praise globally. As a minister who delivered in the previous term, and a leader who was being talked as successor to Vijayan, Shailaja’s exclusion from the cabinet has come as a huge surprise. Yet, she and the ministers who have been dropped have accepted the decision with a straight face, stating that others in the party too should be given a chance as if given an opportunity they too will work hard.
There has, obviously, also been the question raised that if this is going to be a new team, then the chief minister too should have been replaced. But, this was Vijayan’s idea, and changes in the system had been initiated before the elections when the party decided that no MLA who has already served two terms in the House would be given a ticket to fight again. A large number of ministers and senior leaders were excluded even before the elections. This decision, radical in nature, could have backfired on the party that went to the people with new faces, but it worked the other way as CPM returned to power with 99 of the 140 seats in the State. While Vijayan now holds complete sway over the party in the State, what these decisions also indicate is that for the CPM members, the party is above their individual ambitions.
This is so very different from what occurs in Goa and the rest of the country, where ‘winnability’ decides who gets the party ticket and after the election all the important posts are cornered by the senior party members irrespective of whether they are capable of not. New MLAs seldom get the opportunity to show what they are capable of, except when they belong to a small regional party that bargains to get its MLAs positions of power in exchange of support to form the government. But not always have these MLAs proved to be capable. The reason being they got elected because they were seen as winnable and because they proved that they could win elections. If CPM can revolutionise the way elections are fought in Kerala and also the composition of the government, can Goa take a stab at this in 2022? Is there any existing party that is ready to say no to its sitting MLAs who have already served two terms and refuse them party tickets?
Goa has MLAs who have spent decades in power, getting re-elected consecutively from the same constituency. Then there are those who, having lost an election attempt to make a comeback, thereby ensuring that young blood, capable of leading, is denied a ticket. The CPM Kerala model could perhaps work well for Goa, where the State gets a fresh crop of politicians with new ideas. For that to happen, the initiative has to come from the parties. Congress has promised to give tickets to a large number of new faces in the elections, but the party that depends on ‘winnability’ to make its choice also needs to determine the ‘dependability’ factor of the candidates it selects who may otherwise desert the party as has occurred in the past. In 2022, there is an opportunity for Goa to replicate the CPM experiment, all it needs are parties who are willing to break from the past routine.
