The DMK should be partying now, having made a clean sweep of the civic elections in Tamil Nadu. If it is not, it is because the mayhem in Chennai has taken the sheen out of the DMK's landslide win and shown it as a party that will stop at nothing to have its way, when in power.

If you look at the overall results through the narrow prism of Chennai, you don't get the proper perspective. Let's consider the final tally. The DMK and its allies have won not just in Chennai but in all the six municipal corporations, including Madurai, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore and Salem where the AIADMK had done reasonably well in the last Assembly elections. Besides the DMK front has also won in 114 of the 152 municipalities and in an overwhelming majority of the panchayat unions and town and village panchayats. In none of these places was there large-scale violence of the kind witnessed in Chennai.

Overall, the victory was attributable to fulfilment of promises like providing ration rice at two rupees a kilo, land to the landless and colour TV sets to poor homes and writing off a massive Rs 7,000 crore cooperative loans of farmers.

Critics may ask why the DMK failed to get a majority on its own in the last Assembly elections if the front was so strong and how the AIADMK managed to win 60 plus seats, including 7 of the 14 seats from Chennai, if its alliance was all that weak. What gave the DMK front the decisive edge in the civic elections was the implementation of populist schemes in the last four months. Chief Minister and DMK chief M Karunanidhi called the civic polls as a referendum on these schemes and the people, by voting overwhelmingly for the front, have said they want the sops to continue.   
 
If such is the case, where was the need for the DMK to indulge in violence and rigging in Chennai when it could have romped home on the basis of its performance? To know the DMK's psyche, we have to go back to the last civic elections in October 2001. Unlike now, the mayor was then elected directly and M K Stalin won a second successive term, defeating AIADMK's Balaganga, by a narrow margin. The election was marred by violence, which extended even to the counting center.  Stalin had to face a council dominated by the AIADMK, which had won 67 of the 155 wards and increased its strength to 77 through defections. Eventually, Stalin had to give up the mayoral post through a dubious law brought in by the Jayalalitha regime, holding that an MLA cannot hold any other post.

There is a delicious irony in the change of scenario since 2001. Deputy mayor Karate Thiagarajan was the architect of the May 2001 violence in Chennai and was the chief tormentor of Stalin in the council until the latter quit. As luck would have it, Thiagarajan fell from grace and had to go underground. He is now back in the Congress. When two victims of Jayalalitha's vendetta got together, the result was a deadly cocktail that sent the city into a tizzy.

Who's to blame for the Bihar-type violence and booth-capturing witnessed during the elections to the Chennai corporation? Not the DMK alone, for the AIADMK's track record while in power has been no different. Nor the police or the officialdom, for the unwritten rule under Dravidian dispensation is "bend or break". The chief culprit was the political class.
 
The same set of parties, which were with the AIADMK in 2001, are now in the DMK camp--the Congress, the PMK and the CPI and the CPM. They did not protest in 2001 or now, except for the CPM going to court along with the AIADMK, the MDMK and the BJP, supporting the charge of rigging by the ruling partymen. But then, the Marxists have sought repoll only in the wards contested by them. A classic case of running with the hare and hunting with the hound.
 
The results show the farce that has been enacted in the name of elections in Chennai. The DMK front has won in 149 out of the 155 wards with the DMK alone winning in 90 out of the 94 wards it contested. As for DMK's allies, the Congress has won in 38 wards (out of 40 it contested), the PMK in 17 and the CPI and the DPI in two each. The CPM, which put up candidates against the DMK following failure to reach an understanding, has drawn a blank.  The AIADMK has won only in four wards, while its ally MDMK has won in one ward. The BSP has made its maiden entry into the corporation with victory in one ward.

Overall, actor Vijayakanth's Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam has gained at the expense of the AIADMK, a trend that became visible in the preceding Madurai Central Assembly by-election, in which it pushed Jayalalithaa's party to the third place. Still, the DMDK has a long way to go.

With two AIADMK councilors having resigned on the directive of party general secretary Jayalalithaa and two others having been expelled for defying her diktat, the Chennai Corporation will be without what could have been the real opposition.

So much for the commitment of the two kazhagams to democracy. But then, why blame the kazhagams when national parties ride piggyback on them for short-term gains?