CHENNAI: Kamal Haasan’s invitation for an alliance with Congress has been termed by political observers an attempt to break the DMK-Congress alliance. The actor-turned-politician said last week that his party was ready to ally with Congress in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, if the party breaks away from DMK.
VCK general secretary D Ravikumar’s twitter post was perhaps the sharpest. “To break DMK-Congress alliance was one of the wishes of BJP. Why @ikamalhaasan (Haasan’s twitter handle) is endorsing it?” When queried by Express, Ravikumar explained that it is highly ambitious for Haasan to expect Congress to break alliance with a party like DMK and join with his party which has not contested an election. “DMK has established a vote bank of 30 to 35 per cent and surveys point that the party will get most seats in the coming polls. Kamal Haasan is yet to contest an election and even he does not know his own strength,” he said. A few observers said Congress coming out of the DMK alliance can lead to weakening of the DMK, more than Congress. “DMK would need only a narrow margin to win in several seats. If they lose the Congress votes, they may lose a good number of seats. Kamal’s move seems to be aimed at weakening the DMK,” Azhi Senthilnathan, a political observer, told Express.
A section in Congress wondered how Haasan thought he could impose preconditions. “Even Vijayakant placed preconditions only after he proved his vote base. Our State president S Thirunavukkarasar has also made it clear that Kamal should not be putting any conditions before he proves his strength,” said G K Muralidharan, general secretary of the farmers’ wing of Congress.