I give you the absolute freedom to choose me as your supreme leader

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I give you the absolute freedom to choose me as your supreme leader

ARUN RAM

12.04.2021

On Saturday, four days after the Tamil Nadu assembly election, the Madras high court made some interesting observations on a public interest litigation seeking an instruction to political parties to conduct their internal elections before the assembly election. “The petitioner’s sentiment has to be respected as it revealed the highest regard for democratic principles,” the court said, disposing of the petition which was now infructuous since the election had been conducted.

Nothing may come out of such petitions, but they come as occasional reminders of how autocratic our political parties are; they hold a mirror to the reality that the parties that wax eloquent about democracy do not practise it internally. And this is not to say that only those parties accused of practising dynasty politics (and there are plenty of them) are autocratic. In fact, the Congress, which still cannot think beyond the Nehru-Gandhi family for leadership, has a much more liberal intra-party democracy than the BJP. But members of the Congress have used this liberty to foster factionalism that has systematically eaten the innards of the organisation.

The BJP, on the other hand, takes pride in not promoting dynastic succession (though close to 15% of its MPs since 2009 come from BJP families) but its leadership is often handpicked by the RSS or a handful of seniors in the party. The same is the case with virtually every party, where the lowerlevel units and cadres have no say in the selection of the leadership. The communist parties in the 1980s and 1990s conducted internal polls to select committees, but it turned out to be a farce as often the incumbents introduced ‘official panels’ and those comrades who voted for someone outside the panel were shown the door.

In Tamil Nadu, the DMK, AIADMK, PMK, VCK, MDMK, DMDK and all those katchis and kazhagams were born and grew around personalities and most of them have a strong dynastic culture. The MNM, that came three years ago with the promise of change, has anointed founder Kamal Haasan as the ‘supreme leader’ and ‘perennial president’. It is only incidental and by force of circumstances that the AIADMK of late ceased to be entirely unipolar.

A leader who commands respect and shows conviction and direction is not just a prerequisite for a robust party, but also an inspiration for the public, but the problem is we often confuse a strong leader with an autocrat (an autocrat is always strong, but all strong leaders need not be autocrats). While hearing the recent petition, the Madras high court alluded to the US presidential form of leadership, but was silent on the fact that the US president is all-powerful once he attains the post, but the process has several layers of democratic checks and balances. The US and Germany have laws that mandate secret ballots for internal party elections.

It was not the first time the Madras high court had heard a plea for internal democracy in parties. In November 2019, the high court dismissed (as withdrawn) a writ petition from an AIADMK member who sought party polls. The court said it could not entertain the case and asked the litigant to file a civil suit if he so wished. The Election Commission of India said the law did not permit it to interfere with the internal affairs of a political party.

In an earlier column on dynasty politics, I argued that selecting a political progeny is the internal matter of a party; this one is to argue that the internal matter does not follow the democratic process. Am I complaining? If this is how the political circus is conducted, pass the popcorn, please.

arun.ram@timesgroup.com

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There is no anti-incumbency. I had set up teams of 10 members each to canvas 100 voters and get them to booth on polling day — K P Anbalagan, TN HIGHER EDUCATION MINISTER POKER FACE We have enough masks after the result