Thiruvananthapuram, 12 Nov (H.S.): Opposition Leader Pinarayi Vijayan criticised the UDF government over the overnight removal of a protest tent erected by Lower Primary School Teacher (LPST) job aspirants and the arrest of protest leader Valarmathi, saying the action exposed its intolerance towards democratic dissent.

In a Facebook post, Vijayan alleged that the government was continuing to deploy police and use force against people staging peaceful protests. He accused Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan of abandoning the sympathetic stance he had previously adopted towards the protesters.

“Is it not the same Chief Minister who was moved to tears on seeing Valarmathi cut her hair who is now leading this excess?” he asked, referring to her earlier protest.

Vijayan said the rights to protest, demonstrate and express opinions were fundamental guarantees available to every citizen in a democracy. Democratic governance required a government willing to listen to people, rather than an administration afraid of their voices, he said.

He also accused Satheesan and the UDF of attempting to replicate in Kerala what he described as the approach of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Sangh Parivar in Delhi.

Such attempts would not succeed in the state, Vijayan asserted, calling for a strong public mobilisation against the government’s actions.

Drawing a comparison with the previous LDF administration, he said no attempt had been made to dismantle the tent used during the months-long agitation by ASHA workers outside the Secretariat.

Those who repeatedly visited that protest, expressed solidarity with the participants and delivered speeches attacking the then government were now resorting to arrests and dismantling tents to suppress the LPST agitation, he alleged.

Vijayan portrayed the police action as a contradiction between the UDF’s conduct while in opposition and its approach in government, accusing its leadership of seeking to silence the very forms of protest it had supported.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Arun Lakshman