“Kanna Panninga Than Kootama Varum. Singam...Single Ah Thaan Varum” (Only pigs come in herds. A lion always comes alone.)
It rarely happens that a Rajinikanth dialogue fits someone else better than him but in the last 24 hours, this particular dialogue from the 2008 Rajini-starrer Sivaji has gone viral again across Tamil social media to describe actor-politician Vijay-led Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam’s (TVK) unprecedented electoral debut.
No party had previously crossed the 8 percent vote share achieved by the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) in the 2006 polls. A debut anywhere between 15 percent and 25 percent would have been historic and worthy of praise. TVK’s 34.92 percent vote share with a tally of 108 seats goes far beyond that.
What makes the achievement even bigger is that this new entrant did it without any political allies as against the DMK, which had 23 allies, in a state where cash flows heavily during elections. It did so while dealing with pressure from proxies of the Union government to ally with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and while simultaneously facing a hostile DMK-led state machinery in Tamil Nadu.
What must not be forgotten amid the TVK’s stunning debut performance is that most of our election pundits, self-proclaimed political commentators, and analysts not only got their assessment of the party’s fortunes wrong but were also off the mark in calibrating what the true parameter to assess the TVK’s success as a debutant should have been before the election.