Singular focus can help AIADMK’s assertion
In a 34-minute show of strength at the party’s general council meeting on Thursday, former CM Edappadi K Palaniswami effectively sealed his position as the single leader overwhelmingly favoured by the council members to head the AIADMK, in what appears to be the beginning of the end of the fractious ‘dual leadership’ of the Dravidian major. Party coordinator O Panneerselvam, who took the higher party post and accepted the lower government rank of deputy CM in 2017, was barely allowed to speak at the event, with members booing and throwing plastic water bottles at him.
Panneerselvam, handpicked by the late J Jayalalithaa to hold fort in her stead as CM twice, left the event mid-way without presenting the party accounts as scheduled. An agenda of 23 resolutions, including to ratify the election of the two leaders as coordinator and joint coordinator, was fully rejected. As a result, Palaniswami’s camp claims the dual leadership has ended. Palaniswami’s coronation is expected to be formalised at the next general council meeting scheduled for July 11.
While Panneerselvam, nothing if not a canny survivor, is expected to turn to the courts, the EC and even, perhaps, the BJP to thwart Palaniswami’s ambitions and safeguard his own position, any victory would be a hollow one bearing an expiration date. Regardless of how Panneerselvam found himself in this position, it cannot be denied that the practice of dual leadership has weakened the AIADMK. The BJP piggybacked on the AIADMK to win four seats in the state Assembly after two decades.
Since then it has attempted to position itself as the key opposition party despite the AIADMK’s superior numbers. The BJP has been known to cannibalise its partners or other regional parties as a shortcut to electoral power. For the AIADMK to assert itself, win the perception battle—it lost 2021 with respectable numbers—and remain a challenger to the ruling DMK in the next polls, it will need a leadership with singular focus. Palaniswami has displayed a single-minded ruthlessness and political cunning that suggests he may be the party’s best bet for the future. Going by the events of Thursday’s meeting, a good number of his party colleagues seem to feel the same.