Thiruvananthapuram, (Samajweekly) With the second wave of Covid-19 is raging hard in Kerala and for the first time the active cases have crossed the one lakh-mark since the pandemic broke out, it is clear that there will be no honeymoon period for the new government which is expected to assume the office in the second week of the next month.
Counting of votes will take place on May 2 and by Sunday noon, it will be known which of the two traditional political fronts in the state — the CPI-M and Left — will go on to form the government.
An expert, requesting anonymity, said: “Since Vijayan continues to be the first and last word in the Left, he will be able to form his new Cabinet and nobody will dare to raise an objection, either from the CPI-M or from the Left Front. There will be no issues for the transition from Pinarayi-1 to Pinarayi-2 era and hence Covid activities or follow up will not suffer, as the bureaucracy is also fine-tuned with what Vijayan wants.”
“However, if the Congress-led UDF gets the chance to form the new government, then things could turn wary, as there will be innumerable issues within the Congress and the allies to sort out with regards to the Cabinet formation and sharing of portfolios. The bureaucracy also would be caught napping on how to go about things, for fear of ending in the wrong page, with regards to their new political bosses. Hence, for sure the worst affected would be on the way forward on how to tackle Covid,” added the expert.
Incidentally, today the biggest issue plaguing the present government is the non-availability of adequate number of vaccine doses. Also, the new vaccine distribution policy of the Centre is now in place that says that the state government should buy their own vaccines. Now, it could be utter confusion to implement the policies as the Vijayan government has already slammed the Centre on this issue.
As per the data, Kerala so far has received 65 lakh doses of vaccine and only around 3 lakh are left in the stock. Moreover, the fresh supply of the vaccine is yet to arrive. Now, starting May 1, all above the age of 18 also cleared to get the jab, it will be a tough task for the newly formed government to tackle the situation.
So, all in all, it could well be a challenging time, especially if it’s going to be the Congress-led government, as the Left under Vijayan would give no breathing time for them to settle down, as in the past one year, he was being haunted by the Congress-led Opposition for the manner in which he had handled Covid-19.
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