Tuesday, Jul 22, 2003
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Kerala
By Our Special Correspondent
TIMING HIS MOVES? : The senior Congress leader, K. Karunakaran, looks at his watch at a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday. Photo: C. Ratheesh Kumar
Addressing a press conference here this morning, Mr. Karunakaran said that he had been informed by Mr. Patel that the AICC would intervene to solve the problems in the party's Kerala unit and therefore it had been decided to maintain the status quo. He said his faction's minimum demand was for a leadership change, which alone could solve the problems in the party. The problems in the party can be solved in a friendly atmosphere and by taking the MLAs into confidence, he said. He denied that his MLAs had given in writing their willingness to sit as a separate bloc. Mr. Karunakaran said the demand for a change in leadership was being made on the basis of the dismal performance of the Antony Government and Mr. Antony's remarks on communal equations. A Congress Chief Minister should not have made such a remark, he said. "I am only following the party's policy to protect minority rights," he observed. The performance of the Government was not improving but worse, it was deteriorating day by day and the latest was the Chief Minister's remarks on minority communities. Mr. Karunakaran was not ready to reply to questions on his aborted plans to undermine the Antony Government. "I don't want to state anything about this since the AICC has already decided to intervene," he said. Asked whether the AICC president, Sonia Gandhi, had spoken to him, he said the AICC general secretary usually handled the affairs of the party on behalf of the party president. "Issuing threats to party MLAs would not work. We have the strength to implement any decision we take," he said. Asked whether the Chief Minister had asked two of his ministerial nominees to quit the Cabinet for having allegedly given in writing their desire to sit as a separate bloc, Mr. Karunakaran said that it was preposterous to think that the Chief Minister did not have the sense to realise that his nominees would submit their resignations before speaking up. Mr. Karunakaran said his main grouse against the party high command was that it had failed to evaluate the seriousness of the issues he had raised on several occasions in the past, the latest being the memorandum submitted by his MLAs. The high command had got a briefing from here about the situation in the State that was contrary to what actually prevailed and it realised the gravity of the situation only yesterday. In reply to a question, Mr. Karunakaran said that he had talked to some of the UDF partners about the current row. Asked whether the IUML stand that it would not oust Mr. Antony had dashed his moves, he said the IUML had its own problems and its own methods of handling these. In any case, he said he did not expect anything much from its working committee meeting in Kozhikode, which, true to its tradition, would let the party supremo, Syed Mohammedali Shihab Thangal, have the final word. Asked about the possible replacement for Mr. Antony, Mr. Karunakaran said there were a number of capable leaders who could be considered.
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