Poll rout eclipses M Karunanidhi's birthday

Chennai: Reality check replaced the usual sycophancy as DMK president M. Karunanidhi’s relatively low-key 91st birthday celebrations were eclipsed by the party’s successive poll drubbings.

The impact of poll failu-res was telling with almost every speaker, including allies, at the Royapettah rally deconstructing the poll debacle in their own fashion. Puthiya Tamizhagam’s Krishnasamy and VCK chief Thol Tirumavalavan started it by casting aspersions on AIADMK’s resounding victory in the recently concluded Lok Sabha poll.

DMK treasurer M.K. Stalin picked up from there by defining the recent poll rout as “worst defeat” and narrated the trials and tribulations his party had faced from the founding day in 1949 to this date, particularly the dismissal of DMK regimes in the past.

Setting the tone for his father who delved deep in to the ‘resurrection’ issue later, Stalin said the party cadres should use the birthday celebration to vow to strengthen the party by successfully propagating the ideology it stands for.

The usual singing of paeans apart, an eloquent DMK general secretary K. Anbazhagan made good use of the opportunity to remind cadres that victory and defeat were to be treated as just two sides of coin. The best came from Karunanidhi himself. He made an “earnest appeal” to the media, which, he also blamed, was responsible for the party’s poll rout, to support DMK in upholding democracy. “We (DMK) are not your (media) enemies. We will always be there for you when you need help in future and hence work support us,” he remarked.

The icing on the cake was Karunanidhi’s concluding remark, when he said, “We actively considered announcing the changes (rejig in the party) after the high-level strategy committee meet. But we deferred it due to my birthday. The changes would be announced soon and DMK will shine like a polished diamond and sharpened knife after that.”

The nonagenarian’s acceptance speech, sizeable part of which was a critique of alleged media prejudice against the DMK, would easily qualify for a pep talk a demoralised DMK cadre badly needed considering that poll defeat and party rejig dominated the discourse that also lacked not the usual badmouthing of the AIADMK, particularly the disproportionate assets case faced by chief minister J. Jayalalithaa.