CHENNAI: An ambitious MK Stalin, the DMK’s eternal crown prince-in-waiting, is once again running the show solo. Even though party patriarch M Karunanidhi has paved the way for Stalin’s ascendancy by announcing him as the heir apparent, his acceptability among voters has been put to test in the November 19 elections to three Assembly seats. It is more so since he has been leading the charge single-handedly.
While in Tiruparankundram, the AIADMK candidate who won the seat had passed away, Thanjavur and Aravakurichi earned notoriety for elections being countermanded due to large scale cash distribution to voters.
As the key campaigner of the party, he has the burden of proving his leadership. Coming six months after the 2016 May Assembly elections, the bypolls present an opportunity as well as a challenge to him. With his nonagenarian father indisposed and having sidelined his half-sister and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi, the task is cut out for him. For, though the DMK treasurer has succeeded in keeping at bay other claimants to the mantle in the family, he is yet to prove his skills to take the party to electoral victory.
In the May Assembly elections and in the last LS poll, he had a free hand. While in the latter, the party drew a blank, in the former it had squandered an opportunity to return to power, under his watch.
Now, despite the high stakes, Stalin appears to have faltered in Tiruparankundram by fielding a party-hopper, Dr Saravanan, ignoring old-timers. A moneybag, the candidate faces the charge of implanting expired stents on cardiac patients in his hospital. He has also been denied anticipatory bail in the case. In the other two seats, where the DMK pins its hopes, both the Dravidian majors have retained the candidates nominated earlier, despite the charges of cash distribution.
As was the case last time, in this bypoll too, Stalin could not make the DMK a fulcrum of the Opposition and secure the support of either the DMDK of Vijayakant or the PWF, comprising the Left, MDMK of Vaiko and VCK of Thol. Thirumavalavan.
“Stalin has to pass the test to be counted as one who could garner votes and take the DMK to winning ways otherwise, his appeal would be limited to that of the party cadre,” according to analyst Ramu Manivannan, author and professor of political science at Madras University. He said the DMK youth wing leader has to battle the sympathy factor working in favour of the AIADMK.