The Captain's Choice

“Should I be kingmaker or king?”—that was the question Vijaykanth put to supporters at a public rally in Kanchipuram last month. It was a kee­nly watched event, because everybody expected Vijaykanth, till recently the leader of the Opposition in the Tamil Nadu assembly, to drop hints about choosing coalition partners. Every grouping in the Opposition is seen to be wooing Vijaykanth’s party, the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), but who it will align with ahead of state elections in mid-May has been the key question these past few weeks. Captain, a prefix that has stuck to the filmstar-politician after the 1991 hit Captain Prabhakaran (his 100th film), hasn’t let the suspense drop one bit.

Many would say this guessing game isn’t unlike the 2014 Lok Sabha elections (when he finally tied up with the BJP), though this time the DMK-Congress combine appears more hopeful of netting him. “Pazham kanindukondu irukkiradhu (the fruit is ripening)” is what former CM M. Karunanidhi had to say this week about a tie-up. Talk among his partymen is that the DMDK has laid some conditions over sharing power if the combine were to be voted in. Besides, it set conditions over local body elections slated for later this year. The BJP, which doesn’t have a base in Tamil Nadu, has been trying hard to engage with the party and so, it appears, is the People’s Welfare Front, a grouping of parties positioning themselves as an alternative to the two big players, the AIADMK and the DMK, which have traditionally ruled the state almost by turn.

Actually, that’s the plank on which Vijaykanth’s DMDK entered the political arena a decade ago, winning an 8.38 per cent voteshare in Tamil Nadu assembly polls in 2006, though his was the sole seat it won. It bettered that figure in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections with a neat 10 per cent voteshare. In the 2011 state assembly polls, Vijaykanth aligned with Jayalalitha’s AIADMK, contesting fewer seats but winning 29, a haul that made the DMDK the second largest party in the state, ahead of even the DMK. Besides, his party also app­eared to hold onto its voteshare (7.88 per cent in the 2011 state polls).

To be sure, there’s scepticism about whether DMDK’s voteshare is still intact and not a few are unsure about whether Vijaykanth’s five years as leader of Opposition have been effective. Still, his is an intriguing persona. The 63-year-old, who hails from Madurai, rose to stardom in the early 1980s with Sattam Oru Iruttarai, and later, hits such as Sindoora Poove, Pulan Visaranai, Sathriyan and Chinna Goundar. He’s got a fan club but he’s equally a favourite of trolls and social media memes. There are plenty of Vijaykanth jokes, many plainly uncharitable and ridiculing his English, even though he doesn’t speak the language much. Captain jokes are comic, unlike Rajnikant jokes, which veer into the outlandish.

Also, Vijaykanth is outspoken, and has a short fuse—he’s made news in the past for slapping a party worker—and practically everyone knows that he likes his drink.

The kingmaker tag he’s talking about mostly pertains to the DMK’s position, because this isn’t an easy election to call yet. One senior politician, explaining why the DMK is after Vijaykanth, says there are recent surveys which show the two big parties equally matched but with the ruling AIADMK having an edge.

“The 10 per cent (voteshare) may not hold good anymore, it may be anywhere bet­ween 3-5 per cent now,” says political commentator Gnani Sankaran, who reckons Vijaykanth’s party hasn’t built on its strengths in the last five years. For the DMK, anyone who brings some extra votes that will tip the balance will be crucial, he says. Indeed, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections (when the AIADMK swept 37 out of 39 seats) the DMDK’s voteshare had decl­ined to 5.19 per cent. Besides, the party also lost eight legislators, who resigned from the ass­embly two months ago to join rivals.

Gnani says he doesn’t yet see a strong anti-incumbency sentiment against the Jayalalitha government. “There are enough issues but it hasn’t converted into an anti-incumbency yet,” he says.

N. Sathiya Moorthy, of Observer Research Foundation, reckons there is a certain element of anti-incumbency which is inevitable. “But unlike in the past, there are no visible signs of consolidation one way or the other,” he says.

Vijaykanth, however, has been vocal in his criticism of the Jayalalitha government, and some feel he could take away some of the anti-incumbency votes. It would suit the AIADMK if he went with a BJP alliance because the DMDK’s votes will enfeeble the DMK, says Sathiya Moorthy.

Broadly, the opposition is looking to att­ack the ruling AIADMK on what it calls weak governance. “See, there was never an accusation against the performance of the DMK government even earlier. In the last elections, the charges were totally outside the scope of the performance angle because of 2G and other things, which had nothing to do with the state government but took a front seat,” says a DMK official.

 Meanwhile, Vijaykanth’s wife Premalatha has been speaking out against the DMK and is seen to be against a pact with that party. Generally, political observers expect Vijaykanth to play his cards with a longer term view of things, which would entail building the party at a grassroots level.

While he’s an object of ridicule online for his mannerisms and public speeches, many of his film industry colleagues describe Vijaykanth as a friendly, generous and earthy person. He once made a film just to help his driver who was in a bad financial situation and built him a house, goes one story. Another story, recounted some years ago at a public function by the veteran dir­ector S.A. Chandrasekar, with whom Vijaykanth had his first hit, was that the actor would often be seen after his shoot sitting on his bed playing cards with his make-up man, costumer and driver.

“That was routine with him. All the doors would be wide open and he would walk up and down the corridor, in and out of everybody’s rooms, saying, ‘Let’s play cards, let’s sing songs, let’s have fun,’” says Khushboo, the actress-turned-politician, now a natio­nal spokesperson for the Congress.

Sathiya Moorthy says the DMDK may not be a cadre-based party like its bigger rivals but the actor’s fan-following possibly acts as a magnet that draws much support. He explains that there has historically been a 10-15 per cent voteshare in Tamil Nadu in favour of fresh faces over the past several decades, and the 10 per cent voteshare that Vijaykanth mopped up in 2009 could have been largely from those looking for change, besides the votes his fans bring him. The key question, however, that Captain needs to answer now is: king or kingmaker?

By Ajay Sukumaran in Bangalore