Thursday, May 11, 2006

Tamil Nadu Elections - What do you make of it ?

The Tamil Nadu general assembly elections results are out.
Tamil Nadu
Total No. of Seats : 234 Results Declared: 234

Party
Won


DMK
103
Congress
35
PMK
21
CPI (M)
9
CPI
5
AIADMK
52
MDMK
6
DPI
1
DMDK
1
Others
1

The DMK alliance has won and Karunanidhi(82 years old) is going to be the CM for the fifth time. He has jus won his 11th straight assembly election. Mind boggling , considering the fact that he has been in public office for more than 55 years.

Though the DMK alliance won , the DMK as a party has not been able to capture the majority by itself. This has resulted in the possibility of a coalition govt. , a rarity in the state. Though the PMK and Congress have indicated that they are not interested in being part of the government , I find it hard to believe. Here's why ..

The congress has won 35 seats , thats a pretty significant number considering that they dont have a leader like GK Moopanar.But they have Chidambaram , who is considered by many as a future CM of TN or even a future PM of India. The congress is the ruling party in the centre and the DMK has several ministers in the Central Govt ( Dayanidhi Maran for instance..who is by the way an alum of Don Bosco, Egmore..my alma mater as well...Yayyyyyyy !!!) as so does the PMK.

It only makes sense that the Congress would want "power" in some way even if they are not part of the Govt. But here is the tricky part , I think that all the alliance partners(Congress,PMK) would be happy to play "Best friend" until Karunanidhi is the CM(or until he is alive)...Karunanidhi is 82 years old and has had a few scares lately.

Im not sure if there was a huge "anti-incumbency" wave in these elections , considering the ADMK alliance won about 60 seats. But the issue that turned the tide towards the DMK was the election Manifesto..(2 Kg Rice..Free color TV..etc., etc.,) .

Often most of us "Indians" living in the US and elsewhere..think about the positive developments that our country has made over the years. But it is a travesty that people still get carried away by "free stuff". Where is the dignity of a person if he/she would vote for the DMK just because they have promised to give more free stuff than the ADMK ?

Frankly after a few hiccups in the first couple of years..the ADMK administration has been pretty solid. This is just not my opinion but the opinion of experts. For instance , I was in favor of the way Jayalalitha handled the Govt Employees strike...suspending 100000 people overnite ..to get them back to work...gutsy move... But arresting them overnite and threatening them was not so much gritty it was more like a vendetta move !

Overall ...I dont think there is a huge difference in the way that Dravidian parties administer the state of Tamil Nadu. I think its a question of who is the lesser evil.

People have short memories...and its not coincidental that other than MGR , no leader in recent history of TN politics has been the CM for two consecutive terms. MGR was a charismatic ...honest..and "easy to access" leader. People identified themselves with MGR.

It is also interesting to note that Vijaykanth has won his assembly seat from Vridhachalam. The only seat his party managed to win..though his party was a respectable third in most of the constituencies. It would be interesting to see if he becomes a responsible member of the Assembly or not.

Other tidbits :S Ve Shekar won his seat in Mylapore by about 2000 votes beating out Actor Napolean ... Vaiko and MDMK have been wiped out of the political map... Sarathkumar and Radhika are in trouble coz they jumped ship from the DMK but RADAAN (media company owned by Radhika) is the producer of all the top shows SUN TV has to offer today...

End of the day..there was one positive development...the student party started by a group of Ex-IIT'ians..has fared well in Chennai..though they did not win , they gave the other candidates in Chennai a run for their money. I hope these youngsters dont lose their momentum now but keep working towards establishing a name for themselves in the political arena

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the new party Paritrana is pretty exciting too! I mean I can remember myself sitting comfortably and complaining why we don't have such a party (doing nothing much myself except hope and complain alternately) and now someone actually did make an effort! I can't wait to hear more about them in the future.
As for the rest of the politics...phewww- I suppose I should be grateful we're alternating ruling parties otherwise it would become a fascist rule.

Sayee said...

Thats true Sarojini , alternating parties might not be too bad an idea but the problem is that we flip flop between the DMK and ADMK all the time.

The need of the hour is a legit 3rd front ! Thats easier said than done though !

dinesh said...

Sayee,

Good write up !


Bad news ! The party lok paritran has split..edho internal issues about how the election was handled !! That was a stinker....

One of the main people there Santhanagopalan, is a family friend and was PdP's class mate in school.

schematron said...

Split.. I thought LP was the only hope for Tamil Nadu politics. I wish the party remains stable and grows in the coming years. Sayee, it was good to see such a good summary of the elections, though I dont follow much of politics (apologies for my ignorance). I really see LP as a beginning to end corruption.. etc.

Maayaa said...

hey
Nice post giving a total picture of everything..
For people like me its a proper update in 3 minutes

Maayaa said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
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