Jaya confident, partymen confused as AIADMK hits campaign trail
N Sathiya Moorthy in Erode
"I came to see 'Amma'. I could not go to Salem last year when she addressed a public meeting there. Nor have I gone to Madras to see her since the party lost power in 1996. I have seen her. I am satisfied."
Srinivasan, 33, from Erode has been an AIADMK party member ever since he was a child star-struck by the charismatic MGR. After the party founder's death, he backed Jayalalitha. He had felt it hard when the party lost the last election, that too to its traditional rival, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, but had seen it coming by the end of the Jayalalitha regime.
"I knew they would put her in prison, or do some horrible thing like that," says Srinivasan, a father of three and a farm labourer who works part-time in a small yarn unit. "After all, did they not try to 'disrobe' her when they were in power last time?" Here, he is exaggerating the infamous incident in 1990, when a DMK minister tugged at Jayalalitha's pallu when she interrupted M Karunanidhi's budget speech.
Srinivasan is not sure if Jayalalitha will make it this time... Even last time we had no inkling that the rout would be so complete, and that Amma herself would be defeated in her Bargur assembly constituency."
Srinivasan and other grassroots-level cadres who did not benefit in anyway from "Amma's rule" had hoped the lady would see the writing on the wall and get rid of her associate Sasikala Natarajan. Theeya saksthi is the Tamil phrase he uses, the same term Jayalalitha used to describe Karunanidhi.
Muniarathnam, another partyman from Dharmapuri district, was particularly upset that Sasikala was present at the launch of the party's election campaign. If anything could upset him more, it was the reported presence of Sasikala's husband behind the dais "as if to prove that he was the director and ring-master."
He feels Jayalalitha is making a mistake by going on the offensive in her campaigns in the DMK strongholds in the north.
"What crime did I commit? Why did they put me in prison? Was it because I restored the 'MGR rule' dear to you all? Was it because I ensured drinking water to all villages, and kept prices low? I took Tamil Nadu from the 13th most industralised state to the third position But today, with nine ministers from the DMK-TMC combine at the Centre, prices have only risen. You can buy gold, not onions; you can buy silver, not tomatoes," a visibly angry Jayalalitha said from the dais.
The reaction is positive from the front benchers, her supporters. Behind, the audience wriggles uncomfortably. Some even leave.
"I will vote the party, all right, but I don't think it will jell with the people," says Thamizhazhagan, a local-level party official. "You have to apologise to voters for the wrong-doings of the past regime, and seek pardon... Going on the offensive won't help." But Jayalalitha isn't listening.
"I could have arrested Karunanidhi by reopening the Sarkaria Commission report," Jayalalitha said at wayside meetings on her way to Erode. This is a line she has been adopting since the campaign was launched last Tuesday." I will tear off his mask," she promised, also referring disparagingly to the "dynastic rule of the Karunanidhi family that has ruined the state in the last two years."
She then goes on to 'expose the DMK's and TMC's double-speak on G K Moopanar's prime ministerial possibilities last year and the Jain Commission report... "They fight like a cat and mouse in Delhi, but come back together to seek votes as if they were friends."
She attacks Karunanidhi for "hanging on to power" without asking his ministers to quit the Gujral government over the Jain report. "He is responsible for this election," she says.
Jayalalitha is a little less summary in her dismissal of the TMC. She does not name Moopanar, only making passing negative references to Union Finance Minister P Chidamabaram. She also does not forget to argue the BJP's case for a stable government. But in her haste, she had tended to repeat herself, AIADMK cadres admit.
Jayalalitha opens her speeches with references to national politics, then comes down to the state, where the main target, naturally, is Karunanidhi and the DMK. She also brings up purely local issues. At Vellore, she refer to the problems of the local leather industry, at Namakkal, not far from Erode, she brings up the "service tax" levied by Chidambaram's Budget on the truck industry.
"I am happy she mentioned our plight in passing," says Kandaswamy, who owns two vehicles. "But what was she doing when the Budget was proposed last year?"
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