Unpleasant stint

To be sure, Jayalalitha may in the end avert an unpleasant stay behind bars to serve out a year-long sentenceof rigorous imprisonment. At least for now. After all, the special judge in Chennai admitted that his order was based on circumstantial evidence, and Puratchi Thalaivi’s battery of lawyers may successfully appeal against it in the high court. Of course, that would still leave her saddled with the dozens of other corruption cases still pending against her. And fight she will. “I will meet them (the DMK) where they ought to be met,” she intoned after the special judge made his pronouncement, “and send them where they deserve to be.” Well, that battleground, in the great tradition of Indian democracy, will have to be electoral.

Therein lie the AIADMK general secretary’s problems. She claims that the verdict will lead to a sympathy wave; the ferocity of any such wave can only be judged on the basis of the performance of the wide-ranging front she has fashioned for the by-elections on February 17. But it is her fortunes in the forthcoming assembly elections, which have to be held by early 2001, that willdetermine her political future and subsequently her personal well-being. Indeed, all her shenanigans within and without the National Democratic Alliance over the last couple of years have been aimed at wresting the chief ministerial chair.

It is in this context that the conviction has upset her applecart. Given the ignominy the sentence invites and the slow, longwinded ways of the Indian judicial system, Jayalalitha can now ill afford to project herself as a chief ministerial candidate. And given the litany of cases pending against most of her senior party members, she does not have the luxury of choosing a suitable alternative and fiddling with the remote control. To make matters worse, her allies whether old ones like the Congress or potential, though reluctant, ones like the Tamil Maanila Congress will now extract their pound of flesh in any future deal. No longer will she be able to have her way, armed with just a Prada handbag and a gigantic tantrum. No longer will she be able to zoom around in hercustom-made Sierra with threats of political earthquakes.