Thiruvananthapuram: It’s a word war out there, in poll-bound Kerala. In the newest battle, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) came under attack from Kerala’s ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) Wednesday over alleged sexism after Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader Irshad Chaklalassery targeted a woman legislator.
As the statement rapidly catalysed controversy across the state, the leader issued an unconditional apology. That didn’t help. The IUML suspended Irshad from primary membership of the party the same night.
The row began after Irshad targeted incumbent legislator U. Prathibha in Alappuzha’s Kayamkulam constituency for her alleged incompetence as an MLA, saying that she was using her beauty and eloquence for another term.
“As an MLA, we all know that she couldn’t do anything. With that truth, she is again contesting elections using her physical beauty and eloquence as a selling point. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is saying that their candidate has a good personality. Since we don’t want to personally attack her, we are not saying anything. All sitting in front of me know how her personal life is, and we are usually careful about speaking about it,” Irshad was heard saying in videos from the convention. The UDF is fielding Congress leader M. Liju from the constituency.
The controversy took off at this point, with Prathibha calling a press conference. Saying she was “really shocked”, the legislator declared: “There are many women in public life these days. The LDF has fielded women even from general seats. But forces like these want to demoralise women so that they will run away from public life,” she said emotionally.
The LDF too intensified its attack against the UDF on the matter, with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan saying targeting a woman shows the breakdown of political culture. He said the UDF was mistaken to believe that it could win the election by targeting women rather than addressing development and people’s issues.
“This is not an attack on one individual alone; it is an insult directed at all women who are active in public life. It reflects a regressive political mindset that refuses to see women as individuals with dignity, instead choosing to demean them,” he said in a Facebook post.
It was Liju’s turn. The Congress candidate said he believed that the statements were wrong and that he never wanted the campaign to focus on personal attacks. “M. Liju or UDF will never accept personality attacks or body-shaming. He is a good person and might have said it in the spirit of the speech, but we will never justify a statement like that,” Liju said.
A cornered Irshad then apologised, saying that the speech was taken out of context and used against him. He said he never hurt or targeted anyone personally in his political career. “Even so, if my statement has hurt anyone, I express regret,” he said.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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