The message from Srirangam

For the AIADMK, winning the Srirangam by-election without Jayalalithaa campaigning for it, and having Panneerselvam as chief minister, is saying a lot in its favour. But again, a year and more is a long time in electoral politics in the country, and more so in Tamil Nadu, says N Sathiya Moorthy.



In any other state, the ruling party would often be in jitters while facing a by-election, but not in ‘Dravidian’ Tamil Nadu.

Alternating in power since the late 'eighties, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam have ensured that their nominee won, and won by a huge margin, in by-elections, almost all of them to the state assembly. The last time the ruling party lost a by-election in the state dates back to 1989.

It was thus that the ruling AIADMK’s victory in the Srirangam assembly by-poll was taken as done as soon as Chief Minister Jayalalithaa was disqualified by a criminal court in Bengaluru, hearing the disproportionate assets case against her, leading to the bypoll. 

The interesting aspect of the AIADMK campaign is that neither Jayalalthaa, nor Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, campaigned in Srirangam. 

However, the rest of the state cabinet, and almost all party officials, parliamentarians and MLAs had camped there for weeks, and undertook campaign operations with surgical precision.

Though victory for the AIADMK was a foregone conclusion, the cadres from across the state campaigning in Srirangam were confused if they should 'work' for a lead that could surpass that of ‘Amma’ or not.

The DMK could still argue, and ineffectually so, that their candidate did manage to get a few hundred votes more than what the party had obtained in the assembly segment during the equally disastrous Lok Sabha polls of 2014.

The much-hyped Bharatiya Janata Party's entry into the fray, projected as an emerging alternative to the two Dravidian majors, did not go anywhere. BJP nominee M Surbamaniam polled 5,015 votes, or around the party’s stand-alone state-level average of two per cent vote-share.

The BJP's solace came from the Communist Party of India-Marxist doing worse still, with only 1,919 votes.

What then is the ‘message’ from Srirangam?

The AIADMK would want the rest of the country to see it as a message from the state as a whole, in the light of Jayalalithaa’s pending appeal before the Karnataka high court, against the trial court conviction and consequent disqualification.

There is a greater message about the purported mood and method of the Tamil Nadu voters a year ahead of the assembly polls that are due in May 2016.

While the national polity, media and other stake-holders are fully tuned to the ‘Tamil Nadu model’ of winning by-elections, they have also acknowledged the decades-old pattern of the two Dravidian majors alternating in power.

That way, the Srirangam by-poll may have reiterated that the ‘Modi wave’ elsewhere cannot replace the DMK-AIADMK poll-time ‘sibling rivalry’ in the foreseeable future.

There is a lesson in this for the BJP, but the greater lesson is for the DMK.

In a way, the DMK cadres should be celebrating that their candidate did manage a third of the winner’s vote-share, and thus retained the security deposit -- which the BJP and the CPM lost.

It is still a reflection on the intra-party affairs in the DMK, with which the non-cadre, 'swing voters' in the state are not still happy.

While reorganising the party structure after the twin routs in the assembly polls (2011) and the parliamentary elections (2014), the party has retained some of the old guard at the district-level.

These worthies continue to block the promotion of youngsters in their place within the party structure. Nor do they accommodate party 'rivals' at the local level and their followers, with the result the leadership is unable to curb incessant infighting at all levels and in all places.

Outside, the presence and dominance of these one-time strong men in the districts when the DMK was in power, both at the Centre and in the state, has meant that the voter-disenchantment continues,

as never before.

Srirangam is a case in point. DMK strongman K N Nehru, a former minister, as the secretary of the Tiruchi unit (even after its division into four separate ‘party districts’), was in charge of the Srirangam campaign.

It did not go down well with either the party cadres or the voters. The situation is no different in many other districts.

Says a DMK veteran: "Srirangam has proved that there are only two parties in the state, still -- the DMK and the AIADMK, or the reverse. While the people at large continue to think that party treasurer M K Stalin might still be the 'cleanest' politician in the state to be elected chief minister, he playing godfather to highly corrupt and high-handed elements has not gone down well."

What is, however, interesting is the precedents of the past decades, where despite looking confident and popular, whichever party is in power has only lost the next assembly polls. 

"That is one thing that the DMK can hope to count upon, but the party itself need to do more, much more, by itself."

This owes to the fact that none of its prospective allies, like the Pattali Makkal Katchi, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Viduthalai Chiruthaikal Katchi, Puthiya Thamizhagam and the host of minority parties have been able to retain their 'transferrable' committed vote-share. They are also not over-enthused to partner the DMK just now, given the party's inability to enthuse the cadre and voter alike.

"In the past, about a year or so after the conclusion of assembly polls, the voter would have been disenchanted with the incumbent, and would have begun gravitating towards the Dravidian major in the Opposition. Today, the people are unhappy with the AIADMK government, but are unsure about supporting the DMK. This has never happened in the past."

The one hope that the DMK and the rest of the Opposition thus have to count on relates to the ‘government servants’. 

According to local media reports, disenchanted government servants, unhappy with the government’s unwillingness to meet their long-pending demands, are likely to hit the streets en masse, if only in stages.

With two-million government employees and pensioners accounting for close to a ten million ‘family votes’ spread across the state, and working out to about a fifth of the electorate, that is saying a lot.

But the Opposition cannot expect the government employees to take the lead. They might even remain divided, and may not even have a cause to fight for, should the state government begin negotiations with their unions.

Another hope that the Opposition, particularly the DMK, has is the Bengaluru case verdict. Hopes and expectations are that a confirmation of Jayalalithaa’s disqualification might shift the focus away from her leadership and the party.

That could still be a tall order. With Jayalalithaa’s traditional rival in DMK supremo M Karunanidhi confined to a wheel-chair and the fact that the younger generation of voters across the country are tired of old faces and their ways, the entire chief ministerial campaign could finally move on to the next generation.

Here, Stalin is the closest that the DMK can offer by way of change, if at all. 

But the party would require a veteran like Karunanidhi still, for relatively younger leaders of other parties to accept as their chief ministerial candidate.

It is thus that the PMK has already named former Union minister Anbumani Ramadoss as its chief ministerial candidate. Though with a reduced vote-share than the 10 per cent which the party had once polled, DMDK’s star-politician Vijaykanth is as much confused as he is confusing the rest – starting with his ally the BJP.

For the AIADMK, having won the Srirangam by-election without Jayalalithaa campaigning for it, and Panneerselvam as chief minister, is saying a lot in its favour -- but again, a year and more is a long time in electoral politics in the country, and more so in Tamil Nadu.

N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and political analyst, is director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation.

Image: An AIADMK worker holds a portrait of Jayalalithaa as he celebrates the party's victory in the Srirangam by-poll, near the party chief's residence at Poes Garden in Chennai. Photograph: PTI Photo