THE PROMISE OF CHANGE

Actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan kicked off his party Makkal Needhi Maiam’s poll campaign on December 13 from the temple town of Madurai.

- Amarnath K. Menon

Actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan kicked off his party Makkal Needhi Maiam’s poll campaign on December 13 from the temple town of Madurai, the same place where he had launched the party in February 2018, with the promise of providing a people-centric and honest government. The local authorities tried to put a spoke in the wheel at the last minute, refusing permission to campaign within Madurai city, so he took part in a Town Hall-style meeting at the local chamber of commerce and later drove out in a convoy, popping up out of his car’s sunroof to a rousing reception in nearby villages.

“Not just our governance style, our election strategy too will be based on honesty,” Haasan declared at the meeting, adding, for dramatic effect, that if all the black money the politicians had amassed was pumped back into the economy, it would really make Tamil Nadu a better place. Taking barely veiled potshots at the time-tested strategy of political parties to lure voters with bribes, he said the MNM cadre would make door-to-door visits to “wake people up to the new political hope. We’ll tell them that they deserve not just the Rs 5,000 (per vote) but also welfare benefits worth Rs 5 lakh (from the government)”.