During his first stint as Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan had won most of his public war of words with political foes. That was a time when Kerala was fighting two wars, one after the other; first against rising waters and then against an unknown marauding virus.
Pinarayi was commander-in-chief and his words were lapped up by Kerala as if they were its only hope. His daily sunset appearances on television had more viewership than popular TV shows. The television screen was Pinarayi Vijayan's Mount Sinai from where, Moses-like, he delivered commandments for survival in a COVID-struck world. The television screen exalted him.
Even if what the then opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala and later the prime accused in gold smuggling, Swapna Suresh, said had some shine of truth, those were not the times to bother about the failings of the 'messiah'. Neither Chennithala nor the then KPCC president Mullappally Ramachandran, not even Swapna Suresh, stood a chance. Perched high on the television screen, he crushed them.
Silence is gold when Swapana speaks
However, after Pinarayi's second coming, things have changed. Without a war, Pinarayi is no more the messiah, just a mere politician with failings. No one seems more aware of this drop in standing than the Chief Minister himself.
During the last two years, he has largely avoided the platform that had given the biggest ever boost to his popularity: sunset press briefings. It is widely felt that this is the Chief Minister's way of avoiding difficult questions during his second term.
In fact, in this second stint, the Chief Minister seems to have chosen silence as his combat mode. He has stopped responding to charges, zipped up his mouth with a vengeance. The mythical double-hearted Vijayan has been kept in check.
Even the most provocative personal attacks by Governor Arif Mohammad Khan did not elicit even so much as a groan from the Chief Minister. Allegations of inefficiency, corruption and nepotism - the latest surrounding the installation of AI surveillance cameras - are met with a deafening silence.
Swapna Suresh is allowed to come up with the weirdest of charges against the Chief Minister and family and yet there is not even a remote sign of the Chief Minister's family initiating any defamation proceedings.
Such a strategy of aggressive silence seems to be working for Pinarayi, at least in the case of the Governor and Swapna Suresh.
For how long can Swapna hurl wild charges with the other side not caring to respond? Scoring goals with the other side not bothering to put up even the least form of resistance is not an applause-worthy feat. Possibly why Swapna had gone silent for a while.
It is the same strategy that the Chief Minister has adopted with the opposition, hoping that without the smouldering coal of his public anger the steam engine of opposition charges will soon ground to a halt.
Pinarayi tackles Governor Khan
This strategy of silence has worked most with the Governor. The Chief Minister had only to sit back and relax as the Governor got himself burned by his own over-exertions.
One day he asked vice-chancellors of universities in Kerala to resign within 24 hours and then, realising his folly, quickly swallowed his words. Another time, clearly misreading his powers, the Governor withdrew his pleasure in a minister.
Once, out of spite for the Chief Minister, Governor Khan asked journalists to read the memoir of Swapna Suresh, the prime accused involved in Kerala's worst ever gold smuggling scandal, with the earnestness a Governor would have summoned to ask people to read the Constitution. He even asked journalists to "get out" after inviting them to meet him.
The Governor's excesses drew so much attention that it took the focus away from one of the main failings of the Pinarayi Vijayan government: It's meddling in the affairs of universities.
Even if there were gains to be had from shutting up, there were moments in these last two years when the Chief Minister fell prey to provocations and broke out of his carefully cultivated silence. But each time he did this, the Chief Minister's image took a severe beating.
Thunderous clap breaks silence
The first was his "special action" response to KPCC president K Sudhakaran's claim that he had floored Pinarayi with a single kick during their Brennan College days.
"I looked at this chap (Sudhakaran) and made a special action. I clapped my hands together," Pinarayi told reporters in June, 2021, and imitated the gesture in a soft way. "Not in this mild way but in a manner that created a loud terrifying sound. And to go with it, I hurled at him some expletives. A student leader from his side, a friend of mine, suddenly came over and pleaded with me not to do anything," Pinarayi said.
He sounded more like an immature college ruffian than a Chief Minister.
However, it was his angry outbursts at first-time Congress MLA Mathew Kuzhalnadan that had more firmly pulled him down from his high pedestal.
Kerala's own David & Goliath
They first came face to face in the Assembly in June, 2022. The Chief Minister was badly provoked when Kuzhalnadan in quite an even tone informed the House that PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the consultancy that recommended Swapna Suresh to the IT department's Space Park, had close ties with Vijayan's daughter Veena Vijayan.
Vijayan responded like he had heard the most outrageous thing ever. Adopting a menacing body language, he called Kuzhalnadan a liar and insisted that his daughter had no such connections.
The very next day Kuzhalnadan called a press conference and proved his charge. The Chief Minister was wise enough not to provoke him further.
Barely a year later, in February this year, Kuzhalnadan shed all pretensions of politeness and mounted a vicious attack against the Chief Minister in the Assembly. He read out directly from the remand report of the Enforcement Directorate, which had reproduced certain WhatsApp chats the Chief Minister's former principal secretary M Sivasankar had with some of the principal actors involved in the scandal.
Besides hinting at various associations, these chats that Kuzhalnadan read out spoke of a meeting the Chief Minister had with the UAE Consul General at the Cliff House in which Swapna Suresh was present.
Kuzhalnadan is an incitement the Chief Minister just cannot turn his back on. He could have ignored Kuzhalnadan's posers just like he had shrugged away Opposition Leader V D Satheesan's dares inside the Assembly many a time.
Pinarayi stood up and retaliated. He called it "an absolute lie", just like when his daughter's name was taken. What followed was a fierce war of words, with a first-time MLA returning the Chief Minister's angry outbursts with an equally loud and withering battery of words. It was the first time a debutant MLA was seen shouting down a Chief Minister in the Kerala Assembly.
Swapna conundrum
When the sight of Kuzhalnadan causes the Chief Minister's patience to dry up, a question that had remained hidden pops up like submerged structures that show up when the water dries up in summer. Why is the Chief Minister silent about Swapna Suresh who had hurled infinitely more graver charges against his wife and daughter than Kuzhalnadan?
Such a poser would have remained submerged had the Chief Minister adopted the strategy of silence in the face of Kuzhalnadan's provocations.