Kerala CM accuses Congress of seeking to lionise Donald Trump by racing to name a road in his honour in Andhra Pradesh

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan accused the Congress of trying to unabashedly lionise U.S. President Donald Trump by rushing to name a road in Andhra Pradesh after him, despite the “imperialistic ruler’s” transgression of the sovereignty of independent nations, including Venezuela and Iran.

Mr. Vijayan said that the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were equally subservient to the U.S.’s expansionist capitalism. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not made a whimper of protest against the U.S. attacks on Venezuela for the country’s oil. The Foreign Affairs Ministry was so petrified that it even refrained from naming the U.S. in its relatively muted statement,” he added.

He demanded the Centre send a bipartisan political delegation to Venezuela to express India’s solidarity with the beleaguered nation.

He said the BJP has also acquiesced to the U.S.’s crippling tariff regime, which threatens to decapitate the Indian economy. “Notably, the Congress has not registered any protest against the U.S.’s arbitrary tariffs,” he added.

Mr. Vijayan said that closer to home, a prominent regional newspaper, which unabashedly “accepted CIA funding” to catalyse the ‘Liberation Struggle’ that overthrew the first Communist government in Kerala in 1957, has expressed loyalty to its past masters by ‘sugar coating’ the U.S.’s attack on Venezuela.

He said the same newspaper had, in the run-up to the Liberation Struggle, falsely accused the Communist government of seeking to turn religious places of worship into schools and making women “common property.”

Mr. Vijayan said the newspaper has continued to spread smokescreens of lies to denigrate successive Left Democratic Front (LDF) governments.

“On January 5, the newspaper lived up to its reputation by lying that the government’s extreme poverty eradication claim was hollow. The newspaper claimed that the government was attempting to salvage its credibility among the public by relaunching the failed scheme,” he said.

Mr. Vijayan said the newspaper had conveniently omitted that the government had, on the same day as the extreme poverty eradication declaration, announced the second phase aimed at eradicating multidimensional poverty.

“Such lies are a disservice to ordinary working-class people and readers. Such vicious false propaganda is patently and condemnably anti-people and anti-Kerala,” he said.