MNM a failed experiment, say political experts

Actor Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam which observed its fifth founding day a few days ago has lost three major elections without winning any seats raising questions over the party’s future.

Political analysts paint a bleak future for the MNM ahead while the party office-bearers promise to make a turnaround in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Electoral success continues to elude MNM since it was founded in 2018. More than the failure to win any seats what is troubling the party office-bearers is the free fall of its vote share. In its first electoral foray, the MNM polled 3.69 per cent of the total votes in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 but it came down to 2.62 per cent in the 2021 Assembly polls. But, the party was happy over the fact that it had polled considerable votes in the urban areas like Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai which it hoped will translate into seats in the urban local body polls. However, the urban civic polls led to further disaster with a sharp fall in votes for its candidates across the state.

“MNM neither have an ideology nor any convincing demonstration of leadership. For them to go and build a base in the grassroots is most unlikely to happen. We have always asked the question about what Kamal Haasan has done for Tamil Nadu? What has he done except ask basic questions about the system? He has no base in politics. Further, he could not even keep his party leadership together. I think it is a failed experiment,” said Ramu Manivannan, professor and head of the department of politics and public administration, University of Madras.

Bernard D’ Sami, Senior Fellow at the Loyola Institute of Social Science Training and Research (LISSTAR) said that Kamal has founded a political party and wanted to win elections, but he needs to allocate more time for politics. “Whether Kamal Haasan is allocating adequate time for the politics? Politics is said to be a full-time job. One has to spend all the time building a base for the political party from the grassroots. Even if he is not spending 24 hours on the field is not an issue but his concern should be for party,” he said.

An MNM leader said that Kamal was well aware of the ground reality.

“We are not expecting to win the election immediately. He is building the party for the future. There is no doubt that the urban local body poll loss has hurt everyone. But we are focusing on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls with an aim to get a double-digit vote share,” he said.