Smiling their way to victory

By P. Venugopal

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, MAY 12. In a keenly contested election, what a candidate fears most in his or her opponent is the ability to sport a superior smile.

Strategies can always be countered with counter-strategies, manipulations with counter-manipulations. The candidate can confidently leave this aspect of the electoral contest to the wily campaign managers to handle.

But, when it comes to the smile, outside agencies cannot be of much assistance. The candidates have to do it all by themselves. The catch here is that some people are natural `smilers', while some others just do not look their best with a smile on.

Now that the polling process is over, there is no harm in narrating the predicament of the LDF candidate in Alappuzha constituency, Mr. A. M. Abdul Rahim, while attempting to compete with his UDF rival, Mr. K. C. Venugopal, in the matter of wooing the voters with a smiling face.

The first batch of election posters of the LDF had Mr. Rahim looking down from the walls with a wistful expression on his face. A keen observer could have even noticed the traces of a smile on his lips.

However, there was widespread feeling in the LDF circles that this was far short of what the situation demanded, because, the rival candidate, Mr. Venugopal, was virtually beaming like a rainbow from his posters.

To prevent Mr. Venugopal carrying this edge to the polling booth, Mr. Rahim had a second batch of posters printed midway into the campaign. These posters bring out his supreme effort before the camera. However, the smile he could extract out his unyielding facial muscles was, at best, the grimace of a dyspeptic wincing from a sudden pang in the stomach.

According to the story doing the rounds in Alappuzha, Mr. Venugopal was so ecstatic about these posters that he even offered to foot the entire printing expenses on these LDF posters.

Mrs. Mercy Ravi, the UDF candidate in Kottayam, also came across a similar predicament during the campaign. In her case, the problem did not pertain to her ability to smile. But her smile, in the first batch of UDF posters, had a supercilious expression about it.

Her husband, Mr. Vayalar Ravi, who had been managing her campaign, was quick to notice the danger and had a second batch of posters printed. In these posters, she comes out with her lips parted slightly, the expression being that of a woman who is not really supercilious, but only amused at what is happening around her.

Some persons like Mr. K. Karunakaran and Mr. Vakkom Purushothaman are virtually born with radiant smiles on their faces. The famous picture of Mr. Vakkom, smiling from ear to ear while immersing an urn containing the ashes of the late V. K. Krishna Menon in the tri-sea at Kanyakumari several years ago, must be still fresh in the memory of all newspaper readers in the State.

In political circles, Mr. Vakkom's smile, by itself, is considered worth at least 5,000 votes in any election. It must have been the cause of many a nightmare for the LDF candidate, Mr. Kadakampally Surendran, who took on Mr. Vakkom in Kazhakkuttom constituency this time.

Mr. A. K. Antony's smile is a twitch at the left corner of the mouth and it makes him appear as though he is flinching at some especially damaging remark about him by Mr. Karunakaran. Watching the Speaker, Mr. M. Vijayakumar, you are reminded of the smiling Cheshire Cat in Alice's Wonderland. The smile lingers in the air long after the cat has vanished.

Mr. V. S. Achuthanandan prefers to retain the unsmiling expressing of a true revolutionary, but in exceptional cases he is willing to concede a smile, though grudgingly.

The man you can never trick into such trivialities is the CMP leader, Mr. M. V. Raghavan. Even in his election posters, he carries the expression of a television news reader announcing the toll of a hooch tragedy.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : State Elections
Previous : Wayanad sets a new record in poll
Next     : Invalid lingers like a ghost