Madurai: DMK's working president M K Stalin is all set to ascend the throne as the chief at the party's general council meet at Chennai on Tuesday even as elder brother Alagiri sounded yet again his war-cry that the party would come to grief if it continues to keep him out. “If they do not readmit me, they will have to face the consequences”, Alagiri told reporters here on Monday.
He said he would go ahead with the 'silent' march to his father Karunanidhi's burial site at Marina on September 5. “The party cadres only wanted me to take the lead in organising the march to pay homage”, Alagiri said, while appealing to all the DMK members to participate in his rally.
Sounding bitter and angry, the former Union Minister insisted that while he had never craved for any position in the party, his present mission was only aimed at saving the DMK in the present crisis caused by Karunanidhi's death on August 7. “I had kept quiet since Kalaignar was alive. He is not there now. The party has to be saved and protected, so we have entered the arena,” Alagiri said.
Seeking to deflect a reporter's question why he has declared war now after having kept mum when his father elevated Stalin as the party's working president (January 4, 2017), Alagiri claimed that his father had wanted to readmit him into the DMK, “but these people (the Stalin group) were preventing him then”.
Even before the tears could dry on the faces of the grieving kin and the DMK cadres, Alagiri had declared his war on Stalin claiming on August 13, after paying respects at his father's Marina abode that “all the loyal party workers” were with him. He also repeated his jibe that the DMK had lost all the elections it had contested after his expulsion and would continue to lose and face decimation unless he was readmitted.
It may be recalled that Karunanidhi had ordered Alagiri's expulsion (March 2014) at the peak of his vitriolic attacks on DMK leaders — brother Stalin in particular — and Karunanidhi had even gone on record he could not take it anymore. “He told me Stalin would die in three months. Can any father withstand such a horrid thing?” the anguished father had then said, openly. And after that, Alagiri remained in political wilderness as Karunanidhi refused to yield to pressure to readmit him — it came mostly from his wife Dayalu Ammal and daughter Selvi who wielded considerable influence over him.
“If the party leaders, even the cadres, had kept quiet and chose to ignore Alagiri's repeated attacks on the party and Thalapathi so far, that was because we did not want to hurt Kalaignar by taking him on. Though he (Kalaignar) was himself angry at him, the father in him might still not like us criticise his son in strong terms. But now there is no such inhibiting impediment”, said a DMK senior. “Not just that; now the situation is just the opposite. The present party leadership (read Stalin) will actually appreciate it if we hit back at Alagiri”, he added.
That, in fact, was already witnessed soon after Alagiri's Marina declaration of war on August 13, when Stalin's close associate J Anbazhagan, MLA, declared before crowded TV cameras that Stalin should not hesitate to “cut the umbilical cord” (read Alagiri) if that hurt the party interests.
Besides, not a single DMK functionary has come out in support of Alagiri, or even in sympathy pleading his case with the post-Karunanidhi leadership. If anything, Stalin's grip on the party only seems getting stronger, and total, as even the old-timers like party general secretary K. Anbazhagan and principal secretary Durai Murugan, have rallied behind him.
Reporters at his Madurai interaction on Monday asked Alagiri if any known DMK face would be sighted at his Marina homage for his father. “I do not want to answer questions based on presumptions”, he shot back.
Only on Saturday, he had claimed that his September 5 rally would demonstrate his strength. “You will know how the DMK cadres have accepted me and want me there (in the party),” he had said, while repeating his threat that if he was readmitted into the party, the DMK would continue to face defeat in the 2019 Lok Sabha election “just as it did in the last Parliament and Assembly elections”.
The Alagiri rally will certainly be an interesting event for the media that has gone berserk, albeit in patches and thankfully so, in its excitement at the 'challenge' to the new emperor in the DMK. “One must understand Alagiri had been the strongman of the south once upon a time when our leader Kalaignar allowed him to be so. Thalapathi has taken control of all the district units in the south even 7-8 years ago and now the party is completely under his control”, said party senior.
He requested anonymity, explaining, “Party leadership has given us instructions not to react to anything that he (Alagiri) says, not to give any importance to someone who has nothing to do with the party”.
