For the AIADMK's cadres, it is much more than an election symbol, they believe the party's electoral chances rest on owning it, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Protester Sasi Perumal's death has given a new fillip to the pro-prohibition movement, which was beginning to draw attention across Tamil Nadu after different political parties began to make it a part of their poll manifesto for next year, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The going is not going to be easy for the DMK and its allies in Elections 2024. Despite the seats sweepstake in the 2021 assembly polls, the vote-share difference of 5.6% (DMK's 45.38% versus AIADMK-BJP's 39.72%) is not insurmountable on a bad day, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
OPS is just now friendless in the party's second-line, but the situation could change as and when Governor Rao arrives in the state capital, and sets the constitutional ball rolling, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
If anyone is targeting Sasikala or the AIADMK, then they should be looking elsewhere, not at Deepa for leading a revolt successfully, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
At 70, going by hospital records made public, most age and health-related arguments put out against super-star Rajinikanth's entry into politics, before he withdrew citing a 2016 kidney-transplant, hold good for Sasikala, too, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Despite the BJP's displeasure over Sasikala's elevation as AIADMK general secretary, the Dravidian party has sent a message to the Modi government that it will not be cowed down, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Karnataka would have served no useful purpose by initiating a sensitive legal move in a sensational case, where its locus standi might have been confined to appealing against the high court verdict and not extend to a demand for stay of its application
To claim that Tamil Nadu was waiting for a messiah of the 'spiritual' Rajini kind is misplaced, if not mischievous, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Performance counts more than populist slogans when you are in power, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Why did such a 'socially conscientious' people adapt to cash-for-votes and the like, as fish to water? N Sathiya Moorthy offers an explanation.
More than the traditional Dravidian political rivalry that's now on display, it's boiling down to father-son one-upmanship within the DMK, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
With DMK's M K Stalin coming into his own, and the rival AIADMK too leaving no space for third parties, Tamil Nadu will remain a Dravidian stronghold for a long time, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
With election campaign ending in Tamil Nadu before it goes to polls on Thursday, N Sathiya Moorthy lists a few questions uppermost in the minds of voters.
As the Opposition leader in the state assembly, M K Stalin has to fend off the ruling AIADMK on the one hand and prevent the re-emergence of a non-Dravidian Opposition on the other -- but his immediate challenge comes from within, in the form of his wheelchair-bound octogenarian party leader and father M Karunanidhi, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
But not for too long, as TTV Dinakaran can still play spoilsport, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The BJP's national leadership seems to have convinced itself that with a weakened, post-Jaya AIADMK for company, they should be able to strike roots before long, and start by winning about 10-15 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Barring one of the earliest surveys of the kind in the country, in 1989, none has proved right in Tamil Nadu's case, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The DMK still wants to look elsewhere for excuses to its electoral debacle, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Having burnt his fingers with MGR very badly in the past and later with Vaiko, it suited the DMK chief, when disgruntled cadres upset with Stalin's choice for lower-rung party positions, began gravitating towards another member of the DMK's 'first family', says N Sathiya Moorthy
If the Congress lost in Tamil Nadu in 1967, never to return, or the DMK and the AIADMK have kept their place in power and electoral politics since then, it owes not to their love or hatred for gods or for one religion over another. Instead, they had always been linked to performance and incumbency/anti-incumbency factors. There may be something in such constructs for Rajini's strategic team to consider, especially if the superstar is to enter direct politics by around this time next year. But then, they would need to brush up their homework more than at present, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Inscrutable have been the ways of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. She is a political strategist and tactician rolled into one that her unpredictable ways have won the day for her - mostly, says N Sathiya Moorthy
'Rather than 'consolidate' the Hindu majority votes, as the BJP-RSS combine has been known and wont to try, this time round PM Modi has himself taken the party to the next step, by seeking to create a new divide within the majority community, a la V P Singh in his time.'
Today, with the 'Cauvery row' in full flow, the DMK has managed to wrest the 'pan-Tamil initiative' for the Dravidian polity as a whole. What more, the DMK has also stolen much of the 'Tamil thunder' that had belonged to peripheral pan-Tamil groups over the Jallikattu protests in January 2017, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
For Stalin and the DMK, the declaration was the essence of the commencement of seat-sharing talks with the Congress, and even more, the launch of their combined campaign for the LS polls. That meant the DMK had to send out a message also to the 'minorities' in the state, who had deserted the DMK and very badly at that in the critical, post-Jaya R K Nagar assembly bypolls last year, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
It is possibly the first time that a regional party with not even enough numbers to move a no-trust motion has taken the lead, and others are following it. The hints of a no-trust move first came from the YSR Congress, and the ruling TDP could not have stayed on together when the question is another version of 'Telugu atma gouravam' - an issue that fired its founder N T Rama Rao in the 1980s, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
For now, Edappadi K Palaniswami is in the saddle in Tamil Nadu, and firmly so. Both inside the party and the government, he has made OPS a yes-man, as the latter used to be under Jayalalithaa, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The 'Raj Bhavan/Nakkeeran Gopal case', in which editor S Gopal was arrested in the morning and set free by the court in the afternoon, is not the first one where the Tamil Nadu's once-reputed police force is seen as faltering in the eye of the law, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
In private, AIADMK spokespersons say that the raid on Chief Secretary P Ramamohana Rao might be aimed at weakening the AIADMK, and demotivating the party from selecting/electing Jayalalithaa's confidante, Sasikala Natarajan, as her successor -- first as party head then possibly in the government, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The man stood alone, fought alone.' 'Some of those battles appeared Quixotic at times.' 'Ultimately, it was he who won though it may have seemed as if a Sancho Panza was fighting a relentless battle against the windmill.' N Sathiya Moorthy salutes the fearless editor who has passed into the ages.
Should the Karnataka high court deliver a verdict in the Jayalalithaa case on Thursday, the Supreme Court bench on Friday could pass orders in her bail extension plea that may end up staying the former ruling, reports N Sathiya Moorthy.
Calculated or otherwise, if Azhagiri's firing of the first salvo after Karunanidhi's death does not create some space for him to politico-electorally exploit at a later date, there may not be any space left for him at all, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
If Tamil Nadu is to avoid a hung assembly, it is up to the silent voters, whose combined strength is more than that of the two major combines in the fray, says N Sathiyamoorthy.
The deadlock over finalising alliances has had a deleterious effect on the candidates of every party. The delay in alliance conclusion has also sent out confusing signals to the grass-roots who are unsure who will be their party candidate, or which party within an alliance will be allotted a particular constituency, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The veshti controversy in Tamil Nadu is not about the dress -- but a dress-code, which seems permissible in private homes and offices, but not in private clubs that are open only to well-heeled, and well-paying private members, observes N Sathiya Moorthy
As political rivals clamour to retain their pan-Tamil credentials, the BJP may use the 'nationalist' card to even the odds in its favour, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
To elect, or re-elect a chief minister, the AIADMK needs to call only the MLAs for a meeting. But to elect a new general secretary, it would have to conduct direct elections with all registered cadres participating and voting. And that is just the beginning of its problems, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The fact remains that in the present-day Tamil Nadu, GenX and GenY voters, born and/or growing up after the end of 'Kamaraj rule' in the '60s and 'MGR rule', respectively, constitute an absolute majority of the electorate. If they still vote for a Rajini or Kamal, in preference to the established 'Dravidian voters', it is despite the MGR imagery, not because of it, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Jayalalithaa's attack on BJP's PM hopeful a little too late in the coming, says N Sathiya Moorthy
The ruling party's decision to serve 'disqualification' notice to three party MLAs when polling for four more assembly by-elections are due for May 19 may have been taken to keep the flock together post-results, rather than seek to lose more than already, but it has sent out alarming signals in a state ruled till recently by an Iron Lady, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
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