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'It's Jayalalitha who's the central electoral issue'

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

Yes, she was here the other day. The crowd, as usual, was good. Only, she never convinced us why she had to pull down the Vajpayee government."

That was Srikandan, a Bharatiya Janata Party sympathiser in Tamil Nadu's Nagercoil, on All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam chief J Jayalalitha. His Lok Sabha constituency is a Hindutva stronghold.

"Jayalalitha draws crowds, but is unconvincing," says Christdoss, who had voted for the Tamil Maanila Congress last time, and intends to repeat it.

To which, Selvam, an AIADMK member in Sivakasi, retorts: "But, it's the crowds that matter in elections, not principles and ideologies. And even our political enemies concede as much,"

Jayalalitha's first-leg campaign in the constituency indeed had drawn crowds. But her second appearance in the same town a couple of days later saw very few people, leading her to cancel the public meeting and sack the AIADMK local leader, R Thamaraikkani.

Thamaraikkani is now a rebel AIADMK candidate in the constituency.

"You cannot rule out the crowds and the votes they represent," says Senthilkumar, a party worker in Madurai. "Even here, when Amma (Jayalalitha) addressed her poll meeting it was full."

Communist sympathiser Ramesh, expectedly, was not impressed by the AIADMK meeting. "Even TMC leader G K Moopanar addressed a party conference here last month. Does it mean, the party is as strong here, or elsewhere in the state?" he asks.

Reasons Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam cadre Selvarasu, from nearby Dindigul: "With other parties and leaders yet to launch their campaign tours, naturally, people are drawn towards whatever road-show that is available on hand. And Jayalalitha's is the only road-show now."

But he too concedes that the AIADMK has more cadres than any other party in the state, including the DMK. "After all, MGR and Jayalalitha were in power for most part of the last 15 years, and political beneficiaries of their governments' munificence would flock to the AIADMK meetings," he says.

Selvarasu raises another criticism: "I have been reading Jayalaltiha's poll speeches carefully and they are all confusing. At one place she says that she did not topple the Vajpayee government, but in others, she says it was she who toppled it. And where she owns up for toppling the government, she claims that it did not meet the aspirations of the Tamils. But everyone in the state knows why she did it."

"There is no denying the BJP's refusal to concede her unjust demand for the dismissal of the DMK state government," says Sivaswamy Thevar in Sankarankoil. A day earlier Union Home Minister L K Advani had addressed an election meeting there for S Arumugam, the BJP candidate for the Tenkasi reserved seat.

"It's Jayalalitha who is the central electoral issue," says Ramanathan, a Marumalarchi DMK functionary near Kovilpatti, also in southern Tamil Nadu. "Last year too, like the 1996 election, she was the electoral issue. The people would have rejected her all over again, but for the 'BJP tag' and the 'Vajpayee wave'."

According to him, "People then wanted a stable government at the Centre, after two unstable United Front regimes in as many years. The BJP was the only alternative, and with that they had to suffer the AIADMK, as well."

The MDMK, like the Pattali Makkal Katchi, an AIADMK ally in the last election, is now in the DMK-BJP combine.

"You may love her, you may hate her, but you cannot ignore her -- not in this election, not after this election," says K Chinnarasu, an AIADMK lawyer, from near Virudhunagar. "Either you vote for her, or vote against her -- not really for or against Vajpayee or the BJP, or Karunanidhi or the DMK. That's saying a lot."

BJPman Subramanian in Solavandan agrees. Though his first criticism is reserved for Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy, he feels strongly about 'Jayalalitha's destabilising games'

"Like the United Front before it that stood by the DMK over the Jain Commission report, which was more of a political weapon than a fact-finding mission, the BJP too is willing to sacrifice its government on the question of political morals. My heart went out for the Janata Dal-United Front. You only have the BJP left to choose,"

His view is shared by Jayasekharan, who hails from near the temple-town of Tiruchendur, where former TMC Union minister Dhanushkodi Adithan is pitted against the AIADMK's Dr B P Rajan, the former MGR Medical University vice-chancellor.

"I do not belong to any political party. I vote on issues. And I know of many others like me. I have an instinctive feeling that people like me tilted towards the BJP long ago, around the time Jayalalitha started her pinpricks against Vajpayee."

Says his friend and neighbour Prasad, a college lecturer: "Maybe, some of us might have turned to other options if one had presented itself. The Congress still seems to be a non-starter, and a non-serious contender for power in Delhi. And with Sonia Gandhi proving to be ineffectual, the comparison in Tamil Nadu is between Vajpayee and Jayalalitha -- and that is really no comparison."

Prasad has a word of praise for the TMC president G K Moopanar's 'consistent stand'. "I do not agree with him that the BJP is communal, not certainly after the likes of (Muthuvel) Karunanidhi, (Ramakrishna) Hegde and George Fernandes have no complaints against it. But I am happy that someone is willing to stand by principles, and not compromise it for the sake of votes and seats. But it should stop with just that in this election."

"The issue in this elections is simple," says Revathi, a research scholar in Madurai, "Who should rule the country, and who can give stability at the Centre? The Congress seems to have run out of steam even before it began, and the TMC is nowhere in the picture. In Tamil Nadu, thus, it's Vajpayee versus Jayalalitha on the one hand, and Karunanidhi vs Jayalalitha on the other. And there is no question about whom to pick.

"I will vote for the DMK not because I have any love for the party, but because it's an ally of the BJP."

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