CPM summons Kochi Mayor Mercy Williams to party HQ

Pioneer News Service | Kochi

The CPI(M) summoned Kochi Corporation Mayor Mercy Williams to AKG Centre, the State party headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram, for discussions with senior leaders including State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan in the context

of spreading complaints

in the corporation against the Mayor. Pinarayi informed the Mayor of the party’s displeasure over her inefficiency.

In the past three years of her performance as Mayor of the most happening city in the South, Mercy Williams has earned the reputation of being the most ineffective Mayor the corporation has ever seen. In this context, observers attach significance to the party summons served on Mercy Williams.

Talks in the party suggest that the leadership does not have any options before it but to ask her to step down because she through her inability to perform had caused serious damages to the party’s image in the corporation. CPI(M) leaders are convinced that the party cannot face the electorate in the coming Lok Sabha polls without taking such a measure to re-instill confidence in the people of the city.

The changing group equations in the Ernakulam district committee of the party also are not in favour of Mercy Williams. The Mayor is known to be from the group led by Polit Bureau member VS Achuthanandan but this faction has suffered considerable erosion of strength. Even the few councillors belonging to this group do not favour her continuance in the chair of the Mayor due to her infamous inefficiency.

The only factor that keeps her in power in the Kochi Corporation is said to be the influence wielded by her close relative, who is a leading city-based industrialist, who too is a close friend of Achuthanandan. But her reported inefficiency has even made him unable to lobby for her.

From the very start of her tenure as Mayor, Mercy Williams has been criticised for her inefficiency in dealing with the various civic problems in the city, the problems of garbage removal being the most crucial and lack of maintenance of city roads. Once she was even forced to take refuge in a house in the city when the people were holding a protest against her on the road.

The Kerala High Court has taken her to task over the issues of garbage and the roads dozens of times without any result. Even recently, the court had to warn that it would not hesitate to use the relevant articles in the Constitution to dissolve the corporation council if she failed to perform efficiently.

Even the Achutanandan group is convinced that the party would face a humiliating defeat in the Ernakulam and Mattanchery Assembly segment of the Ernakulam Lok Sabha constituency if it went to Parliament polls keeping Mercy Williams in the chair of the Mayor. The Opposition Congress-led UDF is continuing with a campaign against the Mayor and the Left-ruled corporation is also worrying the party.

Councillors of the CPI(M) have been demanding for her removal or serving of strict warnings to her for quite sometime now. A

councillor from the Achuthanandan group said, “We are forced to defend her when discussions come up in the council. We do so only with our voice because we do not have any just argument to do that. She will not get even her vote if a no-trust motion is brought against her.”

Observers see great significance for the summons to Mercy, who has never been in the good books of the official party leadership headed by Pinarayi Vijayan, at this juncture.

Pinarayi had called all the corporation council members to Alappuzha last week to take a decision on the matter. But this could not be done then as Mercy Williams did not turn up and as the matter became big news in the media.