The AIADMK and its charismatic leader Jayalalithaa Jayaram bring to mind Carlos Bilardo, the manager of the Argentina national football team for the 1986 FIFA World Cup held in Mexico. When he was asked by journalists about the composition of the team to be fielded for the world Cup, Bilardo replied: “There will be Diego Maradona and 10 other players.” Argentina won the 1986 World Cup thanks to the scintillating game played by the charismatic Maradona.
Jayalalithaa, the late general secretary of the AIADMK, was Bilardo and Maradona rolled into one. The AIADMK won the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2016 Assembly elections and the 1998, 1999, 2014 lok Sabha elections only because of her leadership. She was at her aggressive best in all these campaigns. All the AIADMK candidates who won these elections would vouch for that. “It is Amma who won the election for me. I am only a foot-soldier of Amma”, said each and every legislator who emerged victorious in the race.
With Jayalalithaa breathing her last on the fateful night of December 5, 2016, the fortunes of the AIADMK too have come to trouble. The AIADMK which boasts of more than 1.5 crore active members, is yet to come out of the shock caused by her untimely demise.
Around the same time, Muthuvel Karunanidhi (94) , the president of DMK, who is also a five-time Chief Minister of the State, began his Maha Prasthanam (long journey) towards sunset. Karunanidhi is confined to a king-sized bed in the first floor of his palace at Gopalapuram in Chennai since early December, and the chances of his staging a comeback to normal life looks very remote.
Karunanidhi, who always thought that the chief ministership of Tamil Nadu was meant only for him, never allowed anyone, including his sons, to pose any threat to his ambitions. Even during the 2016 Assembly election, he had given enough hints that he, and he alone, would be the party’s chief ministerial candidate — making him the oldest ever candidate for the top post in the State.
Both MGR (as MG Ramachandran was known) and Jayalalithaa were titans who could hold together a big political outfit with their towering personalities and charisma. In a State known for the Dravidian secessionist forces, the Malayalam-speaking MGR and the Kannada-speaking Jayalalithaa made the Tamil chauvinists eat from their hands.
With the passing away of Jayalalithaa, the AIADMK has become a picture of chaos, confusion and crisis. The soldiers of Amma stood bewildered, shocked and confused as VK Sasikala, a confidante of Jayalalithaa, took control of the situation with her family members from Mannargudi immediately after the death of Jayalalithaa.
MGR was forced to form the AIADMK to fight the family dreams of Karunanidhi, whose sole aim was to make the DMK a family enterprise. The DMK is like the Congress where the shots are called by the members of the Nehru-Gandhi clan, In the DMK, it is Stalin and Kanimozhi (children of Karunanidhi born to two wives) who set the rules of the game.
The anointment of Sasikala as general secretary and the move to swear her in as Chief Minister created a furore and the AIADMK got split vertically. Thanks to the February 14, 2017, verdict of the Supreme Court, upholding the judgement of the Bangalore Special Court in the disproportionate assets case, Tamil Nadu was saved from the ignominy of seeing a self-proclaimed non-politician becoming the Chief Minister.
To ensure that the control of the party remained within the Mannargudi clan, Sasikala appointed her nephew TTV Dinakaran as the deputy general secretary of the AIADMK before she left for Bangalore jail on February 15. late Tuesday night, Dinakaran was arrested by the Delhi police in connection with alleged attempts to bribe Election Commission officials to secure the Two leaves symbol for his faction of the AIADMK. The warring groups in the AIADMK can salvage the party from its present state of affairs only by ousting Sasikala and her family from the party and also by ordering a CBI probe into the death of Jayalalithaa.
This writer is yet to come across anybody in Tamil Nadu who speaks well of the Sasikala family. The whole of Tamil Nadu had erupted with joy and people burst fire crackers when Jayalalithaa ousted Sasikala and her family from Veda Nilayam as well as from the AIADMK in December 2011. It is another story that Sasikala managed to infiltrate into Veda Nilayam by March 2012.
The situation in AIADMK is worse than what one saw immediately after the demise of MGR. There is no leader worth the name in the party, except for some regional satraps. But these individuals are mere dealers and operators. The AIADMK is badly in need of a person who can hold the various castes together. (This is the black humour about the Dravidian ideology! In spite of the strong rationalist and atheist views propagated by the Dravidian leaders, caste equations play a major role in deciding the winner.)
As on today, the party looks vulnerable to poaching by the DMK. In the absence of a strong leader, the AIADMK is likely to disintegrate in the centenary year of its founder, and that too when Tamil Nadu has a Government being led by it. The relentless fight unleashed by former Chief Minister O Panneerselvam against the ‘Mannargudi mafia’ has helped him to earn a place in the minds
of the party cadre. But he would be able to take the fight forward only by liberating the party from the clutches of Sasikala and her relatives, the carpetbaggers who hit the goldmine of money and power through manipulations, blackmailing, and smart manoeuvrings.
The DMK and MK Stalin are no different. Though Karunanidhi has handed over a well-oiled party structure to Stalin, the latter is not a picture of confidence or boldness. The mention of MK Alagiri, the Madurai-based elder son of Karunanidhi ,is sufficient to throw him out of balance. Stalin’s ego may lead to his own unmaking as he lacks the last mile connectivity with the grassroots level cadre of the party.
What is at stake is the reputation of Tamil Nadu as a State with stability. The weakening of the two Dravidian majors will see several fringe outfits launching the process of bargaining for power. If the AIADMK and the DMK fail to tide over their internal issues, Tamil Nadu
may soon see the kind of alliance politics hitherto unseen and unheard of in the State. If neighbouring Kerala is any proof, Tamil Nadu is in for trouble, real trouble. Besides, national parties like the BJP and the Congress are non-entities in Tamil Nadu.
