A day after the AIADMK announced Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami as its electoral face for the 2021 Assembly polls, party functionaries were upbeat and put up posters pitting Mr. Palaniswami against DMK president M.K. Stalin, in various places, though the election is months away.
In fact, the AIADMK’s IT wing launched its social media campaign for Mr. Palaniswami on Wednesday itself, extolling his political “achievements”.
One such poster asked “Seyal nayagana, arikai nayagana” alluding to Mr. Palaniswami as a “performer” and Mr. Stalin as one who “issues only statements”.
“Earlier, there was no necessity for the AIADMK or the DMK to name a Chief Ministerial candidate. But now, there is such a necessity, and with the official announcement coming from our party coordinator, what else do we need? It is natural for us to work for the victory of our party,” said AIADMK spokesperson R.M. Babu Murugavel on the publicity work.
But isn’t it too early for a poster war? “Seven months will just fly by. A winning party will always work and not wait for an election, to wake up at the eleventh hour. Moreover, our government has done so much for the people and we have content for posters. If the DMK president speaks at two public meetings, we will have content for the campaign for two years,” said Mr. Murugavel, who is also the joint secretary of the party’s legal wing.
According to him, the party is poll-ready. “Only today, our district secretaries obtained approval from District Collectors for our booth-level agents. We are all ready,” he said.
The DMK, however, appears to be waiting. DMK spokesperson J. Constantine Ravindran said his party was not bothered by the AIADMK naming its CM candidate. “How does it matter who is the captain of the ill-fated Titanic, which is set to sink?” he asked cryptically. He felt the posters were only meant to project Mr. Palaniswami as the AIADMK candidate to the general public.
Mr. Ravindran recalled that when AIADMK founder M.G. Ramachandran was the Chief Minister, a member of his Cabinet had said that only MGR was “number one” and others were “zeroes”. The Ministers behaved similarly when Jayalalithaa was the Chief Minister. “Now, these zeroes have decided to become number one. That is how we see the developments. We are least bothered as to what happens in the AIADMK,” he said.