The winning equation

Despite the exit of the MDMK’s Vaiko from the DPA, it was the alliance arithmetic of the DMK-led five-party alliance that finally broke the emotional chord that AIADMK’s J Jayalalithaa managed to strike with voters. Amma streaked across the state, launching her party’s ‘feel good’ campaign a good 10 days before her rivals, listing out her government’s achievements, though belated after her party’s debacle in the 2004 Lok Sabha election.

When DMK chief M Karunanidhi was still ironing out the ruffles in the DPA while apportioning the seats, Jayalalithaa quickly sewed up her three-party alliance, including the MDMK and Dalit Panthers of India, led by Thol Thirumavalavan, and raced ahead covering quick ground and focusing only on the highlights of her largely scandal free five-year regime.

Leaving it to Vaiko and Thirumavalavan to keep up a spirited attack on her rivals, the normally reticent Jayalalithaa opened up to the media, selectively choosing a television news channel every other day on her campaign trail to attack her rivals. Occasionally she would issue a statement, like she did against Union Minister, Dayanidhi Maran, demanding that he be dropped from the Union Cabinet for his alleged ‘‘arm twisting tactics’’ against the Tatas. But her campaign was largely free of any attacks against her opponents.

THOUGH making a late start, the DPA launched a coordinated campaign in almost every rural constituency with powerful orators, including Karunanidhi, clearly the star campaigner, Union Minister, P Chidambaram and Left party leaders, R Nallakannu and T Pandian. Karunanidhi’s son, M K Stalin and Dayanidhi Maran, also charted their own programme, fanning out across the state, whipping up controversial issues during Jayalalithaa’s rule which helped the DPA to decimate her AIADMK in the 2004 Lok Sabha election.

They raked up Karunanidhi’s dramatic midnight arrest, which had evoked a lot of sympathy across the state, the arrest and dismissal of 12 lakh government employees and the controversial anti-conversion Bill. Sun TV repeatedly showed visuals of Karunanidhi’s arrest.

But as Chidamabaram put it, the other ‘nayagan’ (hero) of the DPA victory was the DMK’s poll manifesto. The party’s offer of free colour televisions for the poor, Rs 2 per kg of PDS rice and land for the landless farmer, caught the fancy of the voters particularly when Karunanidhi and later Chidamabaram took pains to explain that the burden on the exchequer in implementing these promises was not heavy.

Jayalalithaa, who initially ridiculed the freebies as ‘‘not financially feasible,’’ hastily joined in, spreading out her own bag of goodies. However, it was the lack of strong allies on her side which preyed on the AIADMK’s prospects. Spurning offers of tie-ups with actor Vijayakant and his DMDK and actor Kartik, who heads the state unit ofthe All India Forward Bloc, proved costly for Amma. Finally, what finished off the AIADMK was the combined strength of the DMK-led alliance and its spread out pocket boroughs.

But behind all that jubilation, it is a worried DMK leadership that is quietly taking stock of its wins and losses. The AIADMK did not do too badly for itself, polling 39.83 per cent of the votes, just a little over five per cent short of the DMK which polled 44.58 per cent of the votes. In fact, demitting office, an undeterred Jayalalithaa declared that she was stepping down ‘‘without the slightest tinge of sadness.’’ Even while savouring the DPA’s success, it is a worried Karunanidhi who is taking charge of the state, knowing well that it may not be too long before Jayalalithaa makes a comeback, perhaps even by the next Lok Sabha election in 2009.