Can Jayalalitha stage a political comeback in Tamil Nadu?

N Sathya Moorthy in Madras

Aides and associates are polite on the phone -- and in person. None of the callousness, crudity and contempt of the past when the master of the house was the all-powerful chief minister of Tamil Nadu, and the unquestioned supremo of the ruling All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. The election results of April 1996 have made a difference, so has the realisation that the public is still fed up with her: not even a dog barked as the successor Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government of her political bete noire M Karunanidhi arrested her on a string of corruption charges on December 6.

It all ends there, though. Jayalalitha is still inaccessible to individual journalists, and independent opinions within her party hierarchy. She continues to meet only those whom she wants to meet, not those who want to meet her. Shunning her past practice of the 'powerful days', she has started meeting with the press as a group. But past habits die hard, and these press meets are few and far between even now. Obviously, Jayalalitha does not want to be embarrassed or harassed by pen-pushers, and chooses the questions she wants to answer and ignores those that relate to her one-time live-in confidante and controversial 'foster sister', Sasikala Natarajan.

Where from here for the AIADMK supremo? Her party has split vertically in the days following the 1996 elections. As irony would have it, all those who had worked with her in her heydays, all those who had benefited from her largesse of the political variety and otherwise, are the ones who are arraigned against her, as the rebel AIADMK, staking their claims to the party flag, symbol and title. And those whom she had shunned at the height of her glorious days, like former minister S Thirunavukkarasu and controversial former speaker, "sky-high-power" P H Pandian are back in her fold.

Does it mean a weakening of her power-base, or not? Will her arrest and subsequent expose of her large collection of jewellery and sarees, and the assets and properties that the Sasikala family acquired during Jayalalitha's chief ministership, haunt her into the future, or not?

For starters, Jayalalitha's problems, particularly of the electoral variety, stemmed form a wrong understanding of the evolving political situation of the day. Fed on the 'MGR myth' of AIADMK founder and her political mentor, the late M G Ramachandran, and on his conviction that the Tamil Nadu voters would not go back to the DMK under Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha though that her day had been made when the DMK was trounced in the 1991 elections, following the Rajiv Gandhi assassination.

She saw it as a continued assertion of a new generation of Tamil Nadu voters, that they would have none of the DMK, or the Karunanidhi leadership. Possibly, she was thus let to believe that the voter antipathy towards the DMK would continue for another decade and more, just as it had happened with the party's defeat in the 1977 polls that returned the AIADMK to power under MGR.

That's where her mistakes began: on a wrong interpretation of the voter verdict. Fuelling a secret ambition of wanting to become a national leader of some eminence, if not the prime minister of India, Jayalalitha obviously charted out on the course that contemporary politicians think is a 'must' for any long-term survival and political climb-up. Amassing wealth, that is.

In the process, Jayalalitha, and her aides and cohorts seemed to have forgotten the masses, their very existence, and also the existence of their soul and being. With the Congress down in the dumps for long, and in no position to challenge her authority in the early days of the P V Narasimha Rao prime ministership, when it was in power at the Centre only at the mercy of friendly parties like the AIADMK, Jayalalitha took little notice of the masses, their views and moods, expectations and grievances. She had concluded that they would not go back to the equally cadre-based DMK, and had no option but the AIADMK, even in a worse-case scenario for her party.

That's what the voter has proved as wrong. He would rather have a chastised Karunanidhi back in power, rather than continue with the arrogance of Jayalalitha team. He would rather assert his supremacy in silence every five years, when the opportunity presented itself, rather than take to the streets on the spur of the moment, when he felt cheated, when he felt neglected, when he felt ignored by those whom he had chosen to run the government of the state for him.

And on this basic tenet, hinges the political future of Jayalalitha. As much as it hinges on the spate of corruption charges filed against her. If she is held guilty, these chances are that she may have to go to prison, and she may thus have to be debarred from contesting the elections for five years after her release.

But the 'political animal' that she is, Jayalalitha seems to have provided enough legal loopholes for a possible escape route, if one presented itself. Other than the minuscule moneys involved in the cases already registered, nothing is heard of the large sums that had been allegedly siphoned off during her tenure.

Most of the properties that had been unearthed stands in the names of Sasikala and her family members -- and if they own it up all, a court may find it not so easy to punish Jayalalitha under Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, where benami (pseudonyms) holdings of a 'public servant' are also covered.

Enough powers had been vested in Sasikala at the time that all the irregularities committed by her could be interpreted to have been done without the chief minister's knowledge and permission. That's if Sasikala owns up -- and sticks to it.

Which may be an easy way out, legally. That's if the courts have enough reasons to accept it as such. But will it mean that the voters would accept the interpretation? Jayalalitha seems to have developed a tactic of 'managing' the politicians and bureaucrats in distant Delhi, and concluding that this alone is enough for her political survival. This was what kept her going at the height of her adversarial times in office, but this was also her political undoing at the hustings.

There is no denying that most of the 22 per cent voters who went with the AIADMK in April last are still with her. The arrests, expose and criminal cases have not changed them much. For one thing, they had known it all even while voting her. For another, they mostly belonged to the 'MGR days', and would not have Karunanidhi rule the State.

But their numbers are dwindling, with each passing generation. That's precisely the reason -- the influx of a new generation of voters born in the 1970s when the DMK last ruled, or misruled the state -- that the DMK could roll back to power last year. For these voters, the misdeeds of the AIADMK government mattered more than the memories of their parents.

Jayalalitha has age on her side. Compared to Karunanidhi and Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) leader G K Moopanar, leading the majority splinter group of the state unit of the Congress since March last, she is much younger -- and thus has a longer political innings ahead. A lot may depend on the criminal cases pending against her, and the course that these cases may ultimately take. Even if the courts acquit her, there is no guarantee that the people would accept her.

Maybe, Jayalalitha can console herself, citing the Karunanidhi example. If the DMK could be returned to power after the defeat of 1991, why not the AIADMK after the 1996 trouncing? There are subtle differences, though. For one thing, no one had complained that Karunanidhi was personally involved in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, or anyone from his party was associated, either. The charge was one of his government being sympathetic towards the LTTE.

Against Jayalalitha, it's one of corruption charges, arrogant administration, and unlawful activities involving bodily harm to political adversaries. All personally identified with these in power, then. People could suo motu accept that Karunanidhi had little control over the LTTE, and the Tigers would have done what all they did, even without a sympathetic government this side of the Palk Straits. Which is not the case with all those corrupt and lawless ministers under Jayalalitha. They could not have done what they did without the blessings of the chief minister.

For all her ambitions and fighting spirit, she has not yielded any ground thus far after the polls -- Jayalalitha is still shy of going to the people. True, they have not approved of her ways as chief minister, but there is nothing personal in it. She would rather confabulate with her lawyers and political shenanigans, rather than meet with party cadres and the public at large -- a promise she made after the poll defeat, but has not bothered to keep since.

Starting from the late Kamaraj, the Tamil voters have not bothered about those who had not bothered about them, in turn. That one thing will continue to bother them in Jayalalitha's case, and it will take more than a man's work -- woman's work in this case -- to bring them around, even slowly, if not swiftly.