With the sun setting at the Marina on August 7, it is time for the son-rise in the DMK. On Tuesday, M.K. Stalin will be elected unanimously as the president of the Dravidian party, the chair that was occupied by his father M. Karunanidhi for 50 years. The party undoubtedly is behind Stalin and it will be an easy takeover for the DMK’s Thalapathy (commander). But the real challenge for him seems to be coming from Madurai, as his elder brother M.K. Alagiri is not ready to give up.
“Kalaignar is not alive today. When he was alive, he had promised to take me back into the party. But these people stopped him from doing that. We should save the DMK. If I am not taken back into the party, they will have to face the consequences in the future,” Alagiri warned after a meeting with his followers in Madurai on Monday.
Alagiri, who was shown the door by Karunanidhi in 2014, challenged Stalin’s leadership just a week after the patriarch’s death. “I have come to express my anguish to my father at his grave. All Karunanidhi followers in the DMK are with me,” Alagiri had dropped a bombshell, just five days after the death of his father. And days later, when the DMK’s executive council met and invited Stalin to take over as the president, Alagiri decided to fire yet another salvo. He called for a mega rally on September 5 in Chennai. “This silent march is on the request of the DMK cadres,” Alagiri explained.
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Alagiri boasts that during the rally he will have at least five lakh cadres walk behind him from Anna salai in the heart of Chennai to Karunanidhi’s grave at Marina. Alagiri’s plans clearly exhibit fissures in the DMK's first family, while there are many within the DMK and outside to help Alagiri ensure the optics challenge Stalin’s elevation.
The once Madurai strong man, who was out of active politics for more than four years now, is unwilling to give up and doesn’t want to remain silent. Unlike the ruling AIADMK, that witnessed several splits, twists and turns after the death of Jayalalithaa, the succession plan is clear in the DMK. While Alagiri may not be able to engineer a major split or a factional feud in the party, he is likely to turn into a thorn in the flesh for his younger brother Stalin.
Alagiri, who has been consistently revealing his wishes to actively get into politics, doesn’t seem to aim for the top post in the party. In his recent interviews, Alagiri has been maintaining that he has to be taken back into the party. Moreover, he is unlikely to take away a big chunk of Karunanidhi followers with him, as Stalin has already consolidated the party behind him. Apparently, all the 65 district secretaries of the party have filed nominations for Stalin to be elected as the president.
Of course, Stalin’s immediate challenge is not Alagiri. With the Lok Sabha elections a few months away, it will not be a cakewalk for the DMK. It is not because of too many players in the fray in the elections or the alliance arithmetic that the DMK is likely to work out, but because the DMK's prospects this time depend on how Stalin will work out strategies without his father to back him. In 2014 and 2016, Stalin, as the party’s working president, had devised strategy but could not make the Dravidian major to leap ahead to capture power.
At a time when he takes over as the president of the party, it doesn’t matter if Stalin doesn't have an immediate strategy to defuse the threat of his elder brother. But definitely, if not now, at least in the next few months, Stalin has to ensure a course correction, for himself and also the party, to lead the DMK back to power.