Shafey Danish
The last decade has shown that coalition politics are here to stay. Virtually in every state national parties are constrained to form alliances with regional political formations to garner enough number of seats.
In Tamil Nadu too, it is not individual parties but coalitions that are in contest. The DMK-Congress combine, and its allies; the Third Front comprising of the AIADMK, the Left Front, the PMK and the MDMK, and the BJP with some minor parties.
DMDK, actor Vijaykanth’s party which has emerged as a major force after a strong showing in the last Assembly elections in the state, has decided to go it alone. Before debating as to which way the results of the LS elections will go; let’s look at some of the factors that will determine those results.
Tamil Nadu politics is a strange animal. In every election one of the two major political parties, usually the one in power, gets wiped out, while the other makes a sweep. The other is nearly wiped out. This happened in the last Lok Sabha elections in which the DMK (and its allies) made a sweep while the AIADMK and the BJP were totally wiped out. But in the assembly elections succeeding that the AIADMK emerged as the second largest party. It is hard to predict therefore whether the clean sweep factor would hold, but one thing is certain, the DMK would be fighting the anti incumbency factor which is so much more prominent in Tamil Nadu than in other states.
While the DMK’s alliance with the Congress is still intact, that with other parties have broken. PMK, which had Ramadoss as a Union Minister has parted ways with the UPA. MDMK has already gone to the other side over the Tamil issue. This can have serious implication for the Congress in Tamil Nadu. One should bear in mind that in the last Lok Sabha polls the UPA could make a clean sweep only because it had most of the parties other than the AIADMK and the BJP with it. The Left Front was with it, the PMK and the MDMK was with it. The hard reality of being out of power had forced the UPA to a pragmatic seat sharing arrangement, while the NDA had been blinded with power. Many of its allies had deserted it and it was fighting the election only in combination with the AIADMK.
This time the Congress internal debate, on which is seems to be betting, is to get itself as many seats as possible. But the situation is uncannily similar to what happened to the NDA then. The UPA allies are leaving the Congress in droves. the boot is quite firmly on the other foot.
The Congress has got 15 seats to contest from the DMK which will be contesting 21 seats (one seat has gone to the IUML and the other two to the VCK) . It is highly unlikely that the alliance will make a clean sweep of winning all the 39 seats this time, as happened in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls.
Alliance wise this is by far the most powerful coalition in the state. It has all the major opposition players, excepting the BJP, which is not a major player anyway, on its side. The alliance with the Left Front and the PMK especially should give rich dividends to the AIADMK.
The PMK has shrewdly concluded that it would be more benefited by going with opposition than with the party in power. In its seat bargain with the AIADMK it has got 6 seats as compared to the five it contested the last time, plus an assembly seat.
BJP has aligned itself with some of the lesser parties like the actor politician Sarathkumar`s All India Samathuva Katchi, and is not expected to have much of an impact on the elections.
Apart from these three alliances the DMDK has decided to go it alone. Though the actor turned politician has failed to make a big impact in the election in terms of number of constituencies won, he did get about 8% of the vote share. His going alone though would be more harmful for the AIADMK combine that the DMK-Congress, as in the last Assembly election he had eaten into the vote share of the PMK and the AIADMK.
The LTTE, that proud representative of Tamil machoism is gasping its last breath in Sri Lanka. The government of India, apart from making admonitory noises, has done little to prevent it from being wiped out. Given that the Tamils in Sri Lanka have deep cultural and familial ties with Tamil Nadu, the issue may well become the deciding factor in the elections.
The thing to note is that here too the UPA in on the back foot. The DMK would be accused of being party to the massacre of Tamils in Lanka as it did not pressurise the UPA government to do more.
The issue has already had its effect; the MDMK has parted ways with the Congress and has joined the AIADMK. The PMK too says it broke away from the DMK because of this.
When the proposal to break the sethusamudram was mooted, the political temperature in Tamil Nadu rose several notches. The DMK was pressing hard that the that the sethu, a bridge of sand and coral joining Sri Lanka to the Indian subcontinent, be broken down to allow for the passage of ships which today have to go round Sri Lanka to come to the other side of India.
The BJP went ballistic accusing the government of hurting hindu sentiment. The VHP launched a nation wide campaign, and Subramaniam Swami was pelted with rotten eatables when he reached court to plead the case in favour of Sethsamudram, by the lawyers there.
While Tamil opinion firmly backs the project to break the sethu, it runs counter to national politics where hindu opinion is firmly against it. The issue has now died down with the central government having put it on the back burner, but its aftereffects can still be felt in the state. The protesting lawyers have clashed with the police and the case has taken an entirely different turn. In political season the DMK may well want to avoid the issue as it did not succeed in pushing through the project, but other parties can very well rake it up to discomfit the DMK and the Congress.
The other factor is the governance: while the AIADMK’s term in power was marred with abuse, the media being one of the major victims, the DMK’s term has been relatively controversy free. This in Indian politics is good governance. The DMK leader has played it both ways on the Tamil issue, not pressing the UPA too much but writing an ode to Thamilchelvan (LTTE ’s political face) on his death. He has also publicly pressed for more to be done for the Tamils. By and large his governance has been good. Dayanidhi Maran the Union Minister for Telecom acquited himself well, and D Raja though he has not been quite as controversy free, may do the same if he manages to pull off the 3G auction in time and in a transparent manner. If the people still remember AIADMK misrule then there is a good chance that the party would again be the runner up in the polls.
