Thiruvananthapuram: The ‘Somalia remark’ controversy triggered by chief minister Oommen Chandy’s open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi has snowballed into a major row with more leaders joining the issue and the CM reiterating his demand for a public apology from Modi.
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As the remark has been taken up as an insult to the collective Malayali pride, both the LDF and the UDF are determined to keep it alive till the day of poll. The issue that came up in the last spell of the campaign is now escalating into a campaign topic similar to ‘Bihari DNA’ issue that had played spoilsport to BJP’s ambitions in Bihar poll last year.
Chandy stepped up his attack against Modi after the latter failed to give any clarification on the issue during Wednesday night’s campaign rally at Kochi. CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Thursday tweeted human development indices of both Kerala and Somalia as a reply to Modi. “Somalia’s HDI is only 0.285 (ranking 229), Kerala’s is 0.712. India’s only high ranking state, Kerala would rank 104 globally. So much for the comparison,” said Yechury.
Though BJP leaders, including state president Kummanam Rajasekharan and Union minister H N Ananth Kumar, tried to defend Modi, tweets and Facebook posts with hashtag #PoMoneModi (Go away Modi) continued to dominate cyber world on the third day. In an indirect response to the controversy, Modi issued a series of tweets saying that wherever BJP formed government it tried to ensure overall development while Communists promoted hartals and Congress corruption.
“The chief minister has never understood what the Prime Minister had said. The Prime Minister has never compared Kerala to Somalia in his speech but had said that it was a dangerous situation like Somalia when child death rates among scheduled tribes in Kerala are compared,” Kummanam said. He advised Chandy to engage a tuition teacher to learn Hindi properly.
Modi’s speech in an election rally at Muzzafarpur in July last year in Bihar was smartly tweaked by JDU leader Nitish Kumar to his advantage. Modi had told the rally that there was “some problem with Nitish Kumar’s DNA”, referring to Nitish’s switching of political stand.
The issue was non-controversial for 10 days till Kumar writing an open letter to Modi. In his letter, Kumar said, “The issue has been troubling many of us. Ours is the same state that had been the cradle of civilization and had given birth to some of the greatest icons in history. When such statements are made, it weakens the collective faith of people in your leadership. Most of us feel that these statements have disrespected the lineage of our people and have denigrated the great legacy of the state”.
A similar controversy was triggered by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal earlier this month by picking up Modi’s speech on Bangladeshi infiltrators. Modi had said if BJP came to power all illegal immigrants would be thrown out and Mamata retorted that speaking in Bangla does not make one a Bangladeshi.