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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 CHENNAI 000107 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O.  12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PTER PHUM KDEM IN
SUBJECT: BHARAT BALLOT 09: ALLIANCE ARITHMETIC IS A KEY FACTOR IN 
SOUTH INDIA 
 
REF:  A) CHENNAI 104 B) CHENNAI 094 C) CHENNAI O60 D) CHENNAI 59 E) 
CHENNAI 27 
 
¶1.  (SBU) SUMMARY:  No single party is likely to win a majority of 
the seats in India's parliament in the upcoming elections.  As a 
result, whichever party ultimately forms the next government will 
need to do so by building a coalition government.  This cable 
outlines the broad features of alliance politics and summarizes the 
make-up of the major coalitions in the four southern states -- a 
region where key alliances with regional parties played a pivotal 
role in the formation of the ruling coalition after the last two 
elections.  Based on the pre-poll alliances, the outlook for both of 
the national parties -- the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party 
(BJP) -- is dark throughout South India.  But due to the ideological 
malleability of the regional parties, who will win a lion's share of 
the seats from South India, both the Congress and the BJP still will 
have a chance to pull in support in the inevitable post-poll 
jockeying to form a government.  End summary. 
 
Alliances key to power in New Delhi 
-------- 
 
¶2. (SBU) One thing is clear about the upcoming elections:  barring 
some major unforeseen event no single party will command a simple 
majority in India's parliament after the votes come in.  In the 
current parliament, the two national parties -- the Congress party 
(150 seats) and the BJP (111 seats) -- do not even have a majority 
between them.  The remaining seats are in the hands of the left and 
regional parties.  Because neither national party is expected to 
make the dramatic improvement over their 2004 tallies to get a 
simple majority, they will again need to pull in a substantial 
number of supporters from regional parties to form a government.  In 
1999, the BJP formed a government with its partners in the National 
Democratic Alliance (NDA); in 2004, Congress assembled the current 
ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA).  It is also possible that 
a coalition of regional parties could form a government, a 
possibility commonly referred to as a "third front."  As a result, 
an understanding of political alliances is crucial to analyzing the 
potential outcomes of the upcoming Indian parliamentary elections. 
 
 
Alliance arithmetic is "key" to success 
------- 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Surveying the South Indian political scene, a senior 
member of The Hindu's editorial staff said "the alliance arithmetic 
will be key."  He was referring to the process by which political 
parties form "pre-poll alliances" with other parties in advance of 
voting in their states.  Pre-poll alliances are especially 
advantageous because they help allies increase their collective 
chances of winning a maximum number of parliamentary seats.  They do 
so by dividing up the parliamentary constituencies between them, 
agreeing in advance on which seats each will contest (a process 
known as "seat-sharing").  Seat-sharing ensures that alliance 
partners do not split their overall vote in a given constituency by 
fielding candidates against each other.  Putting together a strong 
pre-poll alliance can make all the difference in a party's electoral 
fate.  Despite winning a lower overall percentage of the vote, Tamil 
Nadu's DMK routed its rival AIADMK in the 2004 elections on the 
strength of its coalition.  The DMK and Congress allied with four 
other smaller parties, while the AIADMK only managed to pull in the 
Bharatiya Janata Party, which is a marginal player in this state. 
As a result, the DMK won 16 seats, and its allies took the remaining 
23, shutting out the AIADMK and BJP.  The AIADMK did not win a 
single seat even though it won substantially more votes than the DMK 
(approximately 25% for the DMK to 30% for the AIADMK). 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Pre-poll alliances extend beyond seat sharing to support 
on the campaign trail.  Party leaders will often campaign on behalf 
of their ally's candidates, urging members of their own party to 
vote for the alliance's chosen candidates in districts where the 
party itself is not running its own candidate.  For example, DMK 
leaders will hold campaign events urging their party members to vote 
for the Congress party candidate as agreed by their seat-sharing 
arrangement.  To reciprocate, Congress leaders will then urge their 
voters to support DMK candidates in other districts.  A DMK official 
described these cross-party campaign events and endorsements as 
"essential" to the success of a pre-poll alliance.  "If the leaders 
 
CHENNAI 00000107  002 OF 004 
 
 
don't campaign together, the people will doubt the alliance," he 
told post. 
 
Alliances are political, not ideological 
-------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) Alliances are primarily driven by political calculations 
rather than ideology.  With the exception of the near impossibility 
of an alliance between any of India's communist parties and the 
Hindu nationalist BJP, ideology is otherwise not a factor in 
determining alliances.  The logic of political opposition, however, 
is a major factor.  The Congress and BJP will never form an alliance 
on the national level, likewise state level adversaries such as 
Tamil Nadu's DMK and AIADMK and Andhra Pradesh's Congress party and 
Telugu Desam Party will not ally.  Because most parties are 
non-ideological, there is no political dissonance in joining up with 
another party that has taken seemingly contradictory positions. 
This leads to a free-wheeling environment where the range of 
potential alliances is extensive and loyalties are never permanent. 
Examples of unlikely pairings abound:  in Tamil Nadu the staunchly 
anti-LTTE Jayalalithaa has allied with the MDMK, whose leader Vaiko 
recently boasted about personally caring for wounded LTTE fighters; 
the militantly secular DMK once supported the Hindu nationalist BJP; 
and Chandrababu Naidu, once a regular at Davos and darling of 
Western investors, is now in league with Andhra Pradesh's 
communists.   Dr. S. Ramadoss, the founder of Tamil Nadu's 
quick-to-change-sides PMK, put it bluntly in a media interview: 
"coalitions are only for fighting elections together and are not 
based on ideological sameness." 
 
Alliances are temporary, post-poll scenario is wide open 
-------- 
 
¶6.  After the results of the voting come in on May 16, the parties 
will be free to reconsider their alliances and many are likely to do 
exactly that.  Dr. A. Ramadoss, son of PMK leader S. Ramadoss and 
the former Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, highlighted 
this in his comments after his party withdrew from the UPA in March. 
 He indicated that his party could still support the UPA after the 
poll results came in, telling the media that "we have come out of 
the UPA and will be joining the AIADMK.  Post-poll, all my leaders 
have to get together and see what is there.  They will take a call 
after the election." 
 
Tamil Nadu: DMK/Congress alliance finds itself friendless 
-------- 
 
¶7. (SBU) Success in Tamil Nadu, which has a dizzying array of 
political parties of all shapes and sizes, requires a strong 
alliance.  In 2004, the DMK and Congress, along with the MDMK, PMK, 
and the state branches of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) 
(CPM) and the Communist Party of India (CPI), won all 39 of the 
state's parliamentary seats.  But the alliance has melted away over 
time, with the MDMK, PMK, CPM, and CPI all having joined the 
opposition AIADMK.  Congress and the DMK remain together, along with 
a few minor Muslim parties and the Dalit VCK party.  There was much 
speculation that the DMK and Congress would manage to pull in the 
up-and-coming DMDK party, which is led by Tamil film star 
Vijayakanth.  But Vijayakanth shattered those hopes when he 
announced he would go it alone, turning the contest into a three way 
fight between the DMK/Congress grouping, the AIADMK's broad 
alliance, and Vijayakanth's DMDK. 
 
¶8. (SBU) Most interlocutors agree that the loss of the majority of 
its alliance partners seriously damages the Congress-DMK coalition's 
prospects.  The consensus view of their prospects is bleak:  after 
combining to win 26 of the state's 39 seats in 2004 "Congress and 
DMK will be lucky if they win 10 to 15 seats this year, but they 
easily could be wiped out," said the Chennai editor of a major 
newspaper.  "People want to be associated with the winning side, and 
the perception of 'winability' is mostly decided by the party 
line-up," a Chennai-based journalist explained.  Moreover, the move 
of the PMK enhances the potency of the AIADMK-led coalition's 
attacks on the DMK and Congress's position on the emotive issue of 
Sri Lanka's treatment of its Tamil minority population (ref D). 
Even before it formally broke with the DMK and Congress, the PMK 
regularly attacked its allies for failing to do enough to remedy the 
suffering of Sri Lanka's Tamils.  Congress is perceived to be 
 
CHENNAI 00000107  003 OF 004 
 
 
insensitive to the Tamils of Sri Lanka and driven by the Gandhi 
dynasty's desire to avenge the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv 
Gandhi's assassination at the hand of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil 
Eelam.  By standing alone with the Congress party against an 
alliance that includes the LTTE-sympathetic PMK and MDMK, the DMK 
could suffer a backlash. 
 
¶9.  (SBU) Tamil Nadu's BJP is a non-factor.  A Tamil Nadu political 
leader sympathetic to the BJP told post that "none of the state's 
major parties wants to be associated with the BJP for fear of losing 
votes from the Christians and Muslims."  (Note:  Tamil Nadu has 
substantial Muslim and Christian populations.  End note.)  He 
explained that the AIADMK, which is the most likely BJP partner, 
stayed away from a pre-poll arrangement for this reason, but added 
that it remains likely that the AIADMK would support the BJP in the 
event the NDA forms the government. 
 
Andhra Pradesh:  Congress loses allies, BJP out in the cold 
-------- 
 
¶10. (SBU) As in Tamil Nadu, the Congress alliance in Andhra Pradesh 
has come apart.  In 2004 the Andhra Pradesh Congress party ran with 
the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), as well as the state's CPI and 
CPM.  These parties have abandoned Congress for the 2009 elections, 
joining the "Grand Alliance" assembled by Congress's principal 
statewide rival, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP).  This leaves Congress 
to contest the elections with only the All India Majlis-e Ittihad 
al-Muslimeen (MIM), a small Muslim party with a presence in the old 
city of Hyderabad only.  Although the "Grand Alliance" is quite 
large, many interlocutors question whether it is strong enough to 
carry the day.  They note that the parliamentary elections are being 
conducted in conjunction with state elections and that incumbent 
Congress Chief Minister YSR Reddy remains extremely popular in the 
state.  Many believe that Reddy is likely to win another term as 
Chief Minister, and that his popularity will help other Congress 
candidates win votes. 
 
¶11.  (SBU) The wild card in Andhra Pradesh is the presence of the 
Praja Rajyam Party (PRP), founded by Telugu film star Chiranjeevi in 
¶2008.  PRP is contesting across the state, setting up a three-way 
race between Congress, the Grand Alliance, and PRP.  Although 
Chiranjeevi has drawn huge crowds, up to 500,000 at a single rally, 
our contacts almost all believed that PRP is not well-established 
enough to win a substantial number of seats in either the state or 
national elections.  But they do believe the party could be a 
factor, with Congress supporters arguing that PRP's presence will 
benefit their party by splitting anti-Congress and anti-incumbency 
driven votes between Chiranjeevi's party and the Grand Alliance. 
The BJP is completely out in the cold, abandoned by the TDP with 
whom it allied in the previous two national elections. 
 
Karnataka: three-way contest boosts BJP 
-------- 
 
¶12. (SBU) Karnataka's political scene pits three fairly evenly 
matched parties -- the two national parties Congress and BJP, as 
well as the regional Janata Dal (Secular) (JDS) -- against each 
other.  In the May 2008 statewide election, which was a three-way 
contest between the parties, BJP won an outright majority of the 
seats in the state's legislative assembly (110 for BJP, 80 for 
Congress, and 28 for JDS).  Even though it won fewer seats, Congress 
actually had a larger percentage of the overall vote than BJP.  This 
led to much speculation that Congress and JDS would form an alliance 
before the upcoming elections to avoid the same fate in another 
three-way fight with BJP, but they have not been able to agree on a 
formal pre-poll alliance and each party is running candidates in all 
constituencies.  Despite the lack of a formal alliance, it is 
apparent that Congress and JDS have reached a sort of tacit 
agreement to minimize the damage they cause to each other by not 
running their strongest candidates in the same constituencies.  It 
is unclear how well this arrangement will work.  Despite the tacit 
agreement, the lack of a formal Congress-JDS pre-poll alliance 
leaves the BJP in the driver's seat in Karnataka. 
 
Kerala: leftist coalition weakened by infighting 
--------------------- 
 
¶13. (SBU) Kerala's political scene is marked by two very stable 
 
CHENNAI 00000107  004 OF 004 
 
 
alliances:  the CPM-led Left Democratic Fronts (LDF) and the 
Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF).  Though the coalitions 
remain intact, the LDF comes into the election struggling with 
internal infighting within the CPM (ref C), charges of corruption 
against CPM leaders (ref E), anti-incumbency against the LDF state 
government, and problems with the state's substantial Christian 
minority (ref A).  On top of these problems, one of the LDF parties, 
the Janata Dal (Secular) (JDS), has split and one faction of the JDS 
is campaigning against the LDF in northern Kerala.  Other LDF 
parties, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and the Communist 
Party of India (CPI), are disappointed with the results of the CPM's 
seat sharing decisions.  All of the CPM's LDF allies are unhappy 
with the CPM's decision to work with controversial Muslim leader 
Abdul Nasser Madhani, who was implicated as one of the principal 
accused (later acquitted) in a terrorist bombing case in Tamil Nadu 
(ref B). 
 
¶14.  (SBU) Comment:  For political parties in India, elections are 
more about who you dance with than who you are.  In   fractured 
multi-party races won by whoever gets first past the post, the 
composition of alliances can override other factors including the 
issues, the candidates, or the local and national mood.  In South 
India's two biggest states -- Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, which 
will between them elect almost 15% of the Parliament -- analysis has 
focused on the composition of the competing alliances over any other 
factor.  Newspapers in Andhra Pradesh have spilled more ink on the 
ability of the TDP to work with the TRS than the issue of the 
state's rampant corruption; Tamil Nadu media is more concerned with 
the DMK's inability to hold onto the PMK than with the issue of Sri 
Lanka.  Both of the national parties have lost important allies in 
South India.  Congress's lost allies in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil 
Nadu make it unlikely that the UPA will sweep those states as it did 
in 2004.  The BJP finds itself alone throughout most of South India, 
with the exception of Karnataka alone where it will at best pick up 
a handful of seats above its solid 2004 performance.  But all is not 
lost for the BJP and Congress, as South India's always opportunistic 
regional parties will no doubt reassess the situation after May 16 
and consider which formation -- UPA, NDA, or Third Front -- is most 
advantageous to them.  End comment. 
 
SIMKIN