Church-backed farmers shun UDF
The Church feels that the IUML legislative members were not guarding the interests of the farming community as well as the Church.
KOZHIKODE: The Malayora Vikasana Samithy, the farmers’ arm of Thamarassery diocese, has started a silent campaign among the farmers of the Tiruvambadi constituency against voting for the UDF. A demand raised by the organisation and the Thamarassery diocese to return the Tiruvambadi constituency to the Congress from the IUML was earlier rejected by the IUML.
The Church feels that the IUML legislative members were not guarding the interests of the farming community as well as the Church. There was a series of discussions in the two regional conferences of the Samithy held at Thottumukkam, Tiruvambadi and Kodanchery recently, where the majority members asked the leadership to teach the UDF a lesson.
Though bishop Remegiose Inchananiyil had said recently that the Church would follow an equal distance policy, the farmers’ organizations consider it as a signal to take a pro-LDF stand.
Samithy chairman Chacko Kalamparambil said that the spirit of all the regional meetings of the organization was against the UDF. There is a general feeling that the UDF betrayed the farming community without heeding its key issues.
“The price crash of crops like rubber and coconut has affected the agrarian economy,” he pointed out. “We don’t need a person who wins the election with our votes and later engages in his personal real estate and other business endeavours,” he said. None could blame the farmers if they turn against the UDF. The lethargy of successive MLAs of the constituency had resulted in the protest, he pointed out.