Chennai: Opinion polls and surveys on fortunes of political parties in a pre-poll year have a churning effect of their own, much more so in the case of the oldest Dravidian party, the DMK, in Tamil Nadu. If in May 2007 it was the publication by a Tamil daily close to the DMK's first family, of an opinion poll findings that gave the party's treasurer
M.K. Stalin a popularity edge over his elder brother and former union minister M. K. Alagiri in the leadership succession issue, the latest survey by 'People's Studies', a socio-political research group, has found that Mr. Stalin is preferred more than the DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi himself as the party's chief ministerial candidate in the run-up to the 2016 Assembly polls.
Enough as it were to set the cat among the pigeons, to top the DMK’s woes was the party’s headquarters’ spokesman, Mr T.K.S. Elangovan being pulled up by Mr Karunanidhi for "exceeding his brief" on the party's poll and alliance strategies in a recent interview to a national daily.
Notwithstanding the party patriarch's elaborate response in the DMK's organ Murasoli, cautioning his party cadres to be wary of those “trying to create confusion” in the DMK, the unsaid part of it is that the party is still grappling with the leadership succession issue.
It is not about who will head the party next, but who will head a next DMK government if the party is voted to power in the state again and whether it is a plus to upfront project a CM candidate now, political observers point out.
Despite Mr Stalin’s growing stature over the years as a ‘next-gen leader’ in the DMK-, since his 1996 Chennai mayor days, the sibling rivalry and other familial factors in the party ideologue post-Murasoli Maran era, has, posed a dicey issue for Mr Karunanidhi, amid key players in the first family blowing hot and cold.
Even as Mr Stalin has the “blessings” of both Mr Karunanidhi and the other party veteran and general secretary, Prof K.Anbazhagan, in being endorsed as the DMK's 'future leader', the party patriarch, in balancing contradictions, has stopped short of a formal announcement yet. The DMK leader has been saying more than once that the party’s highest policy making body will decide this issue at the appropriate time.
Leadership issues in any political party are by their very nature asymmetrical, that no simple transfer of crown or anointment may work, except under very exceptional circumstances. For, as analysts point out, if 'X is greater than Y', the asymmetry makes 'Y necessarily lesser than X'. Thus in party politics, leaders in most cases, remain leaders till their very end. The DMK is no exception to this trend, caught in a triangular tangle as it were — even if Mr Alagiri has been expelled from the party. This may be one reason why Mr Karunanidhi may want acts to naturally play out themselves as and when situations unfold, point out political observers.
However, in the same breath, for a party like the DMK, which continues to pride its growth on a social justice plank by fusing a broad OBC-Minorities axis as the bedrock of its political base, playing down the leadership issue every time it surfaces may also be seen as weakening that social base.
Political observers say it could cost the DMK as dearly as it now seems to tear apart the 'Janata Parivar' in Bihar, as the Samajwadi party quitting the 'grand alliance' closer to the Bihar Assembly election is also seen as a weakening of the 'OBC-Minorities' base in the Hindi heartland, which was assiduously sought to be cultivated as a secular alternative to BJP-led NDA.
