On October 23, Sunday, it was not just Virat Kohli who returned to brilliant form. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, too, recovered his political swag.
It was Governor Arif Mohammed Khan's October 23 diktat asking nine vice-chancellors of state universities to resign within 24 hours that brought Pinarayi back to form. Till then, the Chief Minister looked utterly unconvincing.
His failure to discipline the police force, a weakness that plagued the first Pinarayi ministry, was exposed yet again. His decision to carry along his businesswoman daughter and his grandchild on an official European trip was met with widespread condemnation. And, as if she insisted on providing salacious theme music to both the Pinarayi ministries, Swapna Suresh, an accused in the sensational gold smuggling case, continued to make damning accusations against the Chief Minister, his family, his close aides and his ministers.
Such situations give rise to uncomfortable ethical and governance questions and Pinarayi had been trying his best to evade them.
Self-righteous defence
During a media briefing on October 19, right after his return from Europe and the Gulf, the Chief Minister shrewdly ducked a pointed question, the first one to be posed to him that day, about taking his family members on an official foreign trip. “Is this the first question that you could think of asking me after I had given a detailed brief of what we had achieved during our European trip,” the Chief Minister said, almost in anger. No one raised the question again.
It is moral outrage, the 'how dare you do this to someone upright like me' kind, that Pinarayi usually employs to shut critics.
Take for instance the Chief Minister's outburst in the Assembly on June 28 this year against Congress MLA Mathew Kuzhalnadan who blamed his daughter's PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) links for Swapna's appointment at Space Park. Kuzhalnadan said that Jaik Balakumar, the director of PwC, was Veena Vijayan's mentor and it was through PwC that Swapna got posted at the Space Park.
Pinarayi roared like approaching doom. “What did you think, that I would be badly rattled if you talk about my daughter? What you said is a preposterous lie. My daughter has never said that such a person was her mentor,” the chief minister said.
But after Kuzhalnadan unveiled the proof, and filed a breach of privilege against the Chief Minister for lying in the Assembly, Pinarayi has never uttered a word on the matter.
Yin and yang of silence
Pinarayi knows when to stage moral outrage to wriggle out of a difficult position, like in the foreign tour issue, and equally well knows when silence is more tactful than an outburst. In Swapna's case, though she has been hurling accusations almost daily against his daughter, Pinarayi has not allowed his paternal instincts to get the better of him like in the Assembly against Kuzhalnadan and seems to have preferred a tactful silence.
But silence can only put on hold difficult questions, perhaps even give him the benefit of doubt.
It will definitely not enlarge Pinarayi Vijayan's image of a double-hearted leader, of a fearless man who walked with an open chest and a head held high through a throng of RSS men with their daggers drawn. Evading difficult questions can also, possibly, cut this larger-than-life image to size.
Loose ball from Governor
This is when Governor Khan, with his brand of restless aggressiveness, came into the picture.
For a long time, the Governor's provocations were largely met with a tactical silence, even when he sacked the Chancellor's 15 nominees in the Kerala University senate in retaliation for their absence at the senate meeting to pick the senate nominee for the VC search committee.
However, even before the Supreme Court's October 21 order declaring as void ab initio, or illegal right from the beginning, the appointment of the APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University vice-chancellor, the Governor had begun exploring hitherto unheard-of possibilities inherent in his constitutional duties.
He threatened to withdraw his pleasure in certain ministers he thought had insulted him. The LDF leaders, and even the Opposition UDF, merely smirked at what seemed like an overreach.
But the Chief Minister found in this “withdrawal of pleasure” remark just the right chance to strive for a comeback, the right excuse to dodge the foreign trip issue.
During the October 19 media briefing after his return from Europe, during which he slyly evaded a question about the 'family trip', he came into his own only when he was reminded of the Governor's remark.
He was evidently delighted that the question had cropped up; he couldn't stop laughing. It was clear he anticipated the Governor issue and had come prepared; the Chief Minister could be seen looking for the written notes even while laughing.
Even then, he was relatively mild. He just reminded the Governor of his place in the constitutional scheme of things.
Kohli's entry, Guv's tweet
But then, after the October 21 SC verdict, the Governor amped up the provocation to unexpected levels. On October 23, almost around the time, Virat Kohli came into bat at a difficult time for India, the Governor's office put out a tweet asking the vice-chancellors of nine state universities to resign the next day before noon.
Pinarayi is not the kind of politician to let such a politically loaded bouncer a miss. He called a press conference the very next day, and used the sharpest, strongest possible words that the decorum of his office allowed him, to warn, ridicule and chastise the Governor. More importantly, perhaps to achieve a stunning dramatic punch, Pinarayi paced his media interaction in such a way that it ended near 11.30 am, the Governor's deadline for resignation.
At 11.30 am on Monday, the VCs, in defiance of the Governor, refused to budge. The Governor could do nothing except extend his deadline to November 3. He even agreed to hear them. What's more, he also conceded that some of the VCs he had asked to step down were “exceptional” and “brilliant”.
Pinarayi's Yeltsin moment
Pinarayi, the consummate politician that he is, made this out as a political battle rather than a constitutional tussle. He projected his October 24 press briefing like it was his mini 'Yeltsin moment'; a Chief Minister thwarting an RSS-backed Governor from taking over Kerala's higher education centres.
All of a sudden, the Governor-CM battle was not about backdoor appointments or procedural defects, it was seen as a clash of ideologies. No one knows better than Pinarayi that a strong ideological push against what is seen as the 'Sangh Parivar agenda' would always be seen as heroic, like the one he led against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2018.