CIA funded ‘Mediasyndicate’ to topple Kerala Ministry!, Laments Pinarai

All of a sudden Pinarayi Vijayan, the State CPM secretary discovered that a ‘media syndicate’ is operating in the State with the intention of ending the Left’s influence over the people.  Surprisingly, media was a friend of Pinarayi, when he undertook the Kerala march from Kasaragod in the North to Thiruvananthapuram in the south during the previous UDF regime. En route, along with the rousing reception accorded by party cadres, Pinarayi deliberately made it a point to host breakfast or lunch or supper, as the case may be, to selected media persons seeking their support.  But now when the CPM is in power media is Pinarayi’s bitter enemies.  How the friends became foes indicate the plight of the Marxist rule in Kerala.

When a host of issues affecting the public cropped up, media did its role wonderfully well in informing the people annoying Pinarayi. Media exposed the double standards and the duplicity of the party and its secretary. In many issues Marxist leaders found it difficult to explain their volte-face to the public. Sensing that the party and its secretary’s rating in nose diving, Pinarayi found that it is all because of the ‘media syndicate’ operating in the State with CIA funds!

Recently Pinarayi himself named the media organisations, which were working against the Left. According to him, Malayala Manorama, Mathrubhoomi, Kerala Kaumudi and Madhyamam, the Malayalam dailies, formed the ‘media syndicate’. Pinarayi’s anger against the first named three leading dailies is understandable. All the three in Pinarayi’s battle with the State Chief Minister, VS Achutanandan stood firmly with the latter.  VS Achuthanandan, Chief Minister and Polit Bureau member of the CPI(M) and the leader of the traditionalists’ faction in the party, had kept a studied silence over Pinarayi’s accusations.

Most Keralites believe that the hullabaloo over the media syndicate is an imaginary collective, born in the minds of certain pro-reform CPI(M) leaders, who had been sore at the allotment of a party ticket to Achuthanandan to contest the last Assembly polls after being denied an opportunity once. Vijayan had first made the mention of a media syndicate operating in Kerala in one of his most media-unfriendly Press conferences against the backdrop of the election, in which he had even gone to the extent of alleging that the “media knew absolutely nothing” about the CPI (M) and its ways.

Since then, Vijayan and his followers had been finding the media responsible for any negative reports about the party. However, the allegation regarding a media syndicate got official credibility when Chief Minister Achuthanandan himself, at the start of the current Assembly session, said that the Government knew of the allegations regarding a media syndicate. He had even said in reply to a question from Congress leader Aryadan Muhammad whether the syndicate had been getting money from the Central Intelligence Agency of the US that he did not want to elaborate on the matter as it had international dimensions. Achutanandan’s remark clearly showed his surrender to Pinarayi to remain in power. On many of the issues Achutanandan meekly surrendered to the dictates of his party bosses in untter helplessness. The Chief Minister is now a prisoner of his own party. (this is an altogether different issue which needs separate handling).

Though political observers do not see the possibility of any serious probe in the matter, as Marxist leaders themselves are aware of the truth, they are of the opinion that the issue of the media syndicate should be discussed widely to impress the people the role of the independent press.  “We are living in a democracy where the freedom of the press is guaranteed. Communists are always intolerant towards any healthy criticism. Had we lived under a Communist regime, then we would know how much freedom they give to the press,” said Prof. C.G. Rajagopal, a political observer.