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Karunakaran to Carry On Remove-Antony Campaign
Mohammed Ashraf
Arab News
TRIVANDRUM, 30 November 2003 — Loyalists of rebel Congress leader K. Karunakaran, whose long-drawn campaign to unseat Kerala Chief Minister A.K. Antony suffered a severe setback following desertions in his camp, yesterday said they would carry on the fight.
“We have made a tactical retreat that’s quite common in politics. It shouldn’t be construed as a defeat. The fight will go on,” Health Minister P. Shankaran, an ardent Karunakaran loyalist, said.
Though Karunakaran had vowed at a massive rally of his supporters in Cochin recently to bring down the 30-month-old Congress-led coalition government after Ramadan with the opposition support, he had to cancel his appointment with Governor Sikander Bakht Friday reportedly after he failed to manage the required numbers.
Though the official clarification was that he was not keeping good health, the octogenarian leader could not keep enough Congress legislators with him to split the party without attracting disqualification by the anti-defection law.
Of the 21 legislators (one-third of the 62-member Congress Legislature Party required for a split) who were lined up at the rally, two — V.J. Paulose and Therambil Ramakrishnan — have made it clear while still maintaining that they are in the Karunakaran camp that they were against forming an alternative government with the support of the 40-member Left Democratic Front (LDF) opposition.
The junior partners of the United Democratic Front (UDF) coalition such as the two Kerala Congress factions led by Transport Minister R. Balakrishna Pillai and Water Resources Minister T. M. Jacob and Revolutionary Socialist Party (Bolshevik) of Labor Minister Babu Divakaran, whose support Karunakaran was banking on to cross the magic number of 71 in the 140-member assembly, also asked Karunakaran to wait for the assembly polls to be over.
“There is no erosion on our side. The leader had to retreat for the time being on advice of the coalition partners and the party high command (of Sonia Gandhi). There is no question of retracting on the main agenda (of removing Antony),” Shankaran said.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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