PARAPPANANGADI: It was an unexpected preface to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s speech after laying the foundation stone of Parappanangadi harbour.

The chief minister began his speech, saying that he had something else to say. He recalled the Kollam bypass inaugural function attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“I had given an earful to certain activists who had shouted Sharanam to disrupt my speech at the function,” he said, evoking spirited applauds from party activists at the venue.

But the chief minister reaction to this was what ‘defused’ the enthusiasm of the workers. They never fathomed that it would be a taunting advice to them.

Seeing the party workers waving red flags bearing Marxist revolutionary leader Che Guvera’s picture, he rhetorically said:

“Whichever government comes to power, it belongs to all. Ideologies may be different. But public venues should be a place to express those ideologies.
I see a flag being waved from behind. This is a picture of a person who is being revered by a large number of people in the country. There is nothing wrong in raising the flag in some other venue. There is no need to carry it to all places. It has its own venues. There you can take it with all your enthusiasm.”