For most it is a ‘Black Day’ or ‘murder of democracy’
Chaotic scenes in Tamil Nadu Assembly raise the question: How legitimate is Palaniswami as CM?
Technically, he has majority support within his party. But does Palaniswami also have the support of the public?
Almost nothing that happened in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Saturday is defensible. Technically speaking, Edappadi Palaniswami of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam won a trust vote, confirming him as the state’s new chief minister. But the circumstances of the vote, amidst a media blackout and scenes of chaos and violence, bring up basic question about the administration that is now taking over one of India’s largest states. Palaniswami has the numbers to be in charge. Does he have the legitimacy?
The vote of confidence was always going to be fractious. AIADMK Members of Legislative Assembly had spent the last week cloistered inside a hotel an hour away from Chennai, as party leader VK Sasikala waited to be asked to form the government. Instead, the state’s governor dallied until the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in an illegal wealth case dating back to 1996. Sasikala was found guilty and sent to prison, debarring her from any public office for the next decade.
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Amid pushing and shoving, the DMK decided it would refuse to cooperate with a trust vote and guards had physically evict the Opposition MLAs. At one point the session was paused so that one member could be taken out in a stretcher and put in an ambulance. Meanwhile, the secretariat had decided to not display live visuals and in between even the transistor piping details into the press room turned off, making it hard to follow what was happening. Eventually, with dozens of MLAs kept out, Palaniswami won the trust vote, 121 to 11.
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What now?
There is a general sense that Sasikala, and by proxy Palaniswami, has the support of the party but not the people. That gap is where OPS tried to operate. Now the DMK’s Stalin has
stepped into the breach. The AIADMK leadership may hope to weather this storm and use the offices of the chief minister to change public opinion, but it will not be easy.
The Budget Session is around the corner, and the DMK is already out protesting, raising questions about Palaniswami’s legitimacy as chief minister. Indeed, the entire sequences of events on Saturday is worth re-examining, starting with the decision to keep the trust vote hidden from the public eye.
Tamil Nadu has been unsettled ever since Jayalalithaa died in December 2016. Saturday’s trust vote should have stabilised things. Instead, it has made the state and its administration seem even more precariously poised.
Source:
https://scroll.in/article/829739/ch...-question-how-legitimate-is-palaniswami-as-cm