AIADMK move stems from Jaya's 'sack DMK' demand
N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras
Will the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham decision to extend 'outside support' mar the Bharatiya Janata Party's chances of forming a government at the Centre?
Though sources in both camps deny such a possibility, President K R Narayanan may look at such an arrangement with some scepticism after the failure of the United Front, backed and pulled down as it was by the Congress.
''There is a vast difference,'' says a BJP source, reacting to the
AIADMK decision. ''There the Congress was the majority party, but here the AIADMK is only a minor partner. More importantly, ours is a pre-poll alliance, with most of the parties in the Tamil Nadu combine seeking the people's mandate only to make Atal Bihari Vajpayee the prime minister.''
The AIADMK, with its 18 MPs, is the BJP's single largest partner, ensuring that Tamil Nadu still holds the centre-stage in national politics even after the failure of the DMK-TMC combine.
The Pattal Makkal Katchi, with its four MPs, the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazagham, with three, and the Thamizhaga
Rajiv Congress (one) have all authorised AIADMK supremo Jayalalitha to hold talks with the BJP, making her bargaining position better and stronger.
Even Janata Party president Dr Subramanian Swamy, who won the Madurai seat as an alliance nominee, is expected to toe the line, taking the strength to 27 MPs.
''But there is nothing for us to bargain, or hold out. It
was a policy decision to back the BJP government,'' says an AIADMK leader.
Though the AIADMK decision is said to have flowed from Jayalalitha's 'unwillingness' to let someone else occupy a ministerial berth before she had been restored chief minister, there are more reasons than personal egos, it is understood.
Ambitious and confident of returning to power in the state at an early date if an opportunity provided itself, the AIADMK does
not want to be part of a 'hotch-potch' government at the Centre,
and let that mar its newly gained acceptability at the voter-level.
''That was the beginning of the end of the DMK-TMC combine,
and we do not want a repetition of that,'' says the AIADMK
leader.
The AIADMK is also not sure of the logic behind the voter backing their alliance. ''Whether he wanted a stable government, or a BJP government, we are not sure,'' says the leader.
Some leaders in the party feel it was the former. However, the AIADMK ''participating in a government that might 'push' the Hindutva agenda surreptitiously could compromise at least some of the electoral gains achieved now''.
The AIADMK leadership also does not want its cadres to rest on
the current laurels, and its leaders to be complacent from sharing power at the Centre. ''If we join the government, we may have enough tools at our disposal to embarrass both the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham and the Tamil Maanila Congress,'' says the leader. ''But may fall into the illusion that we had won our day.''
The party also does not want to embarrass its MDMK and PMK
allies in particular, by joining a government of which they themselves may not be partners, the leader adds.
''But that may pose problems for the BJP if the President
insists on most, if not all alliance partners, joining the government, if only to render it stability,'' says a source.
''The President has the failed United Front precedent before him.
He knows the AIADMK and its local allies's local political compulsions. He also knows how the UF's much-touted common minimum programme failed to take off, and how the
Congress never kept its promise of forming a coordination committee when its support to the Inder Kumar Gujral government was accepted by then president Shankar Dayal Sharma.''
Though the AIADMK sources stoutly deny it, the Congress too
is said to have approached the party for its support, promising
to consider an early dismissal of the DMK government and
early polls to the state assembly, in return.
Discomforted by the development, the BJP leadership despatched party general secretary M Venkaiah Naidu to Madras, and he called on J Jayalalitha at her Pose Garden home on Wednesday.
While the BJP has made it clear that it will not dismiss the Karunanidhi government if it came to at power at the Centre, the party is not unwilling to consider new situations and developments that may justify a central intervention, says a BJP source. In political terms, that could mean the AIADMK and its allies coming up with corruption and collusion charges against the DMK regime.
For the BJP, any dismissal of the Karunanidhi government now could mean a 'stab in the back', apart from the morality and legality of it all. Though it is not well known, the two parties had
established informal contacts on the possibility of the DMK facilitating a BJP government at the Centre, in the same way that the TDP is now considering. Only the poll results in Tamil Nadu made it unnecessary, if not impossible.
Though the DMK was still considering a similar option even after
the results were out, what has reassured the party is the reported
intervention by V P Singh. The former prime minister, considered the 'raja guru' of the United Front, is said to have obtained a promise from the Congress that a Congress government at the Centre would neither disturb the DMK regime, nor rake up the Jain Commission's report.
Karunanidhi's despatching ministerial colleague 'Arcot' N Veerasamy to Hyderabad to hold parleys with Telugu Desam Party supremo and Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu is also said to have followed V P Singh's suggestions.
The Congress is said to have made a similar promise to Naidu that his state government would not be dismissed if the party came to power at the Centre.
Elections '98
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