Now, Kollywood stars battle on poll pitch in TN

Starry affair: Short of good crowd pullers, political parties rely on screen performers

Their speeches and starry tantrums provide a comic relief to the otherwise shrill campaigning ahead of the April 13 Assembly polls.

Not that film stars are strangers to Tamil Nadu politics but their infusion into the two major Dravidian parties – the DMK and the AIADMK - has spawned a new genre of poll rhetoric.

Leaders like DMK chief Karunanidhi and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalitha themselves began their careers in films, while emerging parties like the DMDK and smaller ones like the ‘Anaithu Indiya Samuthava Makkal Katchi’ have star-leaders like Vijayakant and Sarath Kumar respectively.

However, short of good second string crowd-pullers, the parties have had to rely on screen performers like comedian Vadivelu, a spirited Kushboo, character actor and MP Napolean and stage and TV  personality Dindigul Leoni.  While the DMK’s youth wing leader and Deputy Chief Minister M K Stalin effectively combined serious politics with lighter touches Kushboo, now a DMK member, struck a novel note. She urged women to vote for the DMK if their children were to get more free nutritious food and “look as pink, plump and healthy as Kushboo.”

Vadivelu’s entry into the DMK campaign kept the crowds tickled but the part had reasons to feel apologetic because his outbursts against ‘Captain’ Vijayakant tended to evoke revulsion. Vadivelu later polished his skills enough to earn Stalin’s approval. “Vijayakant started as a hero (in films), then turned a villain (in the poll field) and has now become a comedian,” Stalin said, referring to the DMDK leader allegedly beating his own party nominee in public at Dharmapuri.

“On the contrary, Vadivelu, who began as a comedian, is a real hero now by giving fitting replies to Vijayakant,” he added.

Stalin, who stopped by a tea-shop and sipped tea made by an AIADMK sympathiser to show how ‘inclusive’ the DMK was getting, took pot-shots at Jayalalitha’s tirade against alleged ‘DMK’s family rule’. “Yes, ours is family rule as we are a big family.

‘Kalaignar’ (Karunanidhi) protects lakhs of families with his welfare schemes and so ours is ‘Kudumba Aatchi’ (family rule), but Jayalalitha does not believe in family,” he said.

Sensing that the reference to ‘Amma’ did not go well with the women in the audience, Stalin dropped the remark in his later speeches. To counter Vadivelu’ caustic humour – on Wednesday  campaigning in Dindigul district the comedian dubbed the AIADMK-DMDK alliance as one that does not mix like water and oil after Vijayakant kept out of the opposition’s big rally at Coimbatore,  the AIADMK has fielded another comedian Singamuthu.

When Vijayakant’s watery hole became the butt of Vadivelu’s jokes in the poll campaign, Singamuthu, using his lung power for ‘Amma’s front, turned around to allege that “Vadivelu drinks more and that too in the raw,” making his audience burst with laughter.  But actor-campaigners in the past were more restrained. One real heroine in the last few days has been a woman poll official, Ms Sangeetha in the Tiruchirappalli constituency, where DMK bigwig, K N Nehru is in the poll race. On a tip-off that over Rs 5 crore in big travel bags was being transported atop a bus, she sped to the spot in the dead of night with two aides and a sub-inspector, confronted the van driver and seized the cash, suspected to be meant for distribution to voters.