The seemingly impending crisis looming over the beleaguered government of E K Palaniswami in Tamil Nadu has evidently blown over for now with the Madras High Court’s decision to uphold the disqualification of 18 AIADMK legislators loyal to rebel leader T T V Dhinakaran by the Assembly Speaker in September last year. The Palaniswami government has been hurtling from crisis to crisis, and in the process, its performance has been singularly lacklustre. The next challenge would be when as many as 20 constituencies —18 on account of disqualification and two due to the death of incumbents — go for byelections.
Dhinakaran, who wields considerable clout and has formidable money power will try every stratagem to upstage the AIADMK and will come in direct confrontation with the DMK which is now without the shadow of Karunanidhi who ruled the party like a colossus. Dhinakaran has the tacit backing of his crafty aunt Sasikala who is undergoing a four-year sentence in jail for possession of assets disproportionate to her known sources of income.
Battlelines are being drawn between the DMK which is in talks to build an alliance with Dalits, the Left and the Congress, the AIADMK, which has informally tied up with the BJP and Dhinakaran’s party the Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) which has the potential to upstage the AIADMK with its penchant for manipulative politics. The AMMK is pitching for an alliance with Ramadoss’ PMK and with Vijaykanth’s DMDK which have some following in northern Tamil Nadu.
Dhinakaran is also keeping the option open for challenging the Madras High Court disqualification verdict in the Supreme Court. Indeed, Dhinakaran, under Sasikala’s inspiration, is seeking to capitalise on Jayalalithaa’s name and garner votes as a loyalist of the former chief minister who had become a virtual cult figure until the setback to her reputation as a result of the conviction in the disproportionate assets case.
However, the reality is that Jayalalithaa kept a distance from Dhinakaran and never trusted him. The late Jayalalithaa had she been alive would have lamented how her legacy was belied by her closest associates — her closest friend Sasikala, and her two political lieutenants Palaniswami and O Panneerselvan who have virtually forsaken her but for occasional lip service paid by them.
The DMK, which under patriarch Karunanidhi was a formidable rival to Jayalalithaa passed away a few months after her and the mantle has fallen on Stalin who will be tested in the next Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. Though Stalin has wielded power for years in the DMK, he always functioned under the shadow of his father Karunanidhi who groomed him. This time around he will face his biggest challenge with the patriarch no longer on the scene.