JUST SPAMMING | Nitpicking alone can’t help win elections

The drumbeats for the next Assembly elections in the State have turned more audible though the polls are actually a year away after varied political parties started girding up their loins to clinch it in their favour to suit their needs. While the ruling DMK is leaving no stone unturned to ensure an encore with a bigger majority than earlier by protecting its flock of allies under its wings, the rest of the disparate parties seemed to be united in one goal: To unseat the DMK. The urge to defeat the DMK has made them so desperate that most of them have started resorting to nitpicking but in their own ways, as of now.

Top leaders of the key opposition parties, the AIADMK and BJP, have been regularly pointing their fingers on something or the other about the present dispensation in the public sphere. Besides issuing statements and meeting media persons, who are ubiquitous around the clock with their outstretched microphones, the politicians have in their own control social media channels to level allegations on the ruling government regarding its leaders, their practices and functioning.

So, what is happening is that the social networking sites and YouTube channels are flooded with what they now call ‘content,’ of the political variety, all through the day. Social media, anyway, also criticizes those who criticize the government, giving a semblance of a balance. But the opposition charges are so loud and vocal that it makes an impartial observer wonder if the people of the State take those claims, assertions and avowals on their face value and take an electoral decision based on them.

Whatever effect the daily accusations will have on the voters, the political leaders seem to believe that they could make an impact with those innuendoes, biting indictments and speculations. That makes the opposition party leaders busy digging up old muck or speaking to disgruntled elements and keeping a watch for apparent lapses and missteps. The latest trend is to paint the ruling party as anti-national with the hope that the people would rise against it and vote it out.

When the State government came out with a promotional video to announce its State Budget, the BJP leaders found the details in the logo unacceptable. Actually many who saw the promotional video earlier did not notice what the BJP leaders like State President K Annamalai and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman found to be a crime against the country and also the Tamil people. They pointed fingers at the logo in the promotional video because it did not have the recognized symbol for rupee but had the Tamil alphabet Ru instead.

All of those who painstakingly took up cudgels on behalf of the rupee symbol also did not forget to point out that the particular symbol was designed by a Tamilian, that too the son of a former DMK MLA. They wanted to tell the people that though the designer who created that logo was from Tamil Nadu, the State government led by M K Stalin was refusing to recognize the work. Nirmala Sitharaman even asked why the DMK, if it disapproved of the symbol, did not object to its adoption when it was declared as the official symbol in 2010 during the UPA regime in which the party was a part. The symbol was chosen through a competition to identify a suitable design that would denote the Rupee just like the US dollar and the Sterling Pound have their traditional symbols that are recognized worldwide with old typewriters having exclusive upper case keys to type them out.

What the BJP leaders and also a slew of anchors of national television channels were berating was that it was an insult to the nation to not use that symbol in the logo for the State Budget. Unfortunately, no computer keyboard has the provision to type out that symbol and it is not mandated by the Constitution that the rupee cannot be explained in any other form. It came into use just 15 years ago after the Reserve Bank of India wanted to have an exclusive symbol for the rupee. But for the BJP it becomes sacrosanct particularly when the issue is used to target the DMK.

Similarly, the BJP and also the AIADMK, have been nitpicking on the DMK by blowing up issues that the general public is least concerned about. The AIADMK general secretary, Edppadi K Palaniswami, who normally points fingers at the government for road accidents and other crimes, wanted the government to resign when the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided offices of the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) and claimed to have detected Rs 1000 crore corruption.

Besides, Palaniswami said that by the time the investigations into the alleged scam in the liquor trade were over, the quantum of the irregularity would have gone up several times, without realizing that the State Minister of Prohibition V Senthil Balaji had said that his department had only followed the procedures adopted by the previous government, led by Palaniswami, in the liquor business. Even Annamalai has called for a protest in front of the TASMAC office though there is a long way to go for the ED to take the matter to court. On the whole, it looks that the opposition parties believe that they could overthrow the DMK in the elections by just repeatedly besmirching the government’s image.