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PRIMA DONNA:
INDIA:
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ASIA | March 30, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 12 |
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She Can Make or Break the BJP
 he empress has risen again. just 18 months ago, the political career of Jayaram Jayalalitha, a plump and mercurial former actress, seemed to have self-destructed. Voted out as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu state, she was jailed for 28 days for having amassed wealth "disproportionate to known sources of income"-an estimated $14 million in alleged kickbacks. Police raids uncovered 10,000 silk saris, a shoe collection to rival Imelda Marcos' and jewelry valued at more than $2 million. Investigators also allegedly unearthed evidence to charge Jayalalitha, 50, in eight different corruption cases. No matter. Tamil voters have forgiven her, even if the courts haven't.
Since last month's general elections, she has vaulted to national political prominence. Her party, known by its Tamil acronym aiadmk, won 18 parliamentary seats and controls nine other seats from Tamil Nadu. The Bharatiya Janta Party (bjp) needs all of those seats for its minority government to survive a coming confidence vote. Wooing Jayalalitha hasn't been easy; this time she wants more than colorful saris. She has demanded control of the powerful law, finance and home ministries, allegedly to protect herself and female confidante Sasikala Natarajan against prosecution in a string of corruption cases. A former video rental shop owner, Sasikala rose to become her most trusted adviser. Her preference for finance minister, Subramaniam Swamy, is particularly troublesome; Swamy once publicly insulted Vajpayee, attacking him as a drunk and a womanizer. Next Jayalalitha wanted Vajpayee to dismiss her nemesis, Tamil Nadu's current Chief Minister, Muthuvel Karunanidhi. Says a senior bjp official in Madras: "We made it clear that she cannot continue to reign regally as if the entire bjp alliance were just another Jayalalitha fan club." At her height, Jayalalitha's admirers tattooed themselves with her portrait and erected 30-m-high cutouts of her, putting entire Madras neighborhoods under her bulky shadow. Rebuffed, Jayalalitha ended negotiations with the bjp and flew back home to a domestic tragedy: her favorite white Pomeranian, Julie, one of 15 pet canines, had died. Jayalalitha relented, slightly. She produced a second list of demands, nearly as impossible as the first. Tamil, she said, must be elevated nationwide to an official language, along with Hindi and English. Of course, if the bjp were to concede, speakers of India's 15 other recognized languages might insist that they be made official too, which would create administrative chaos. She also sought bjp support for Tamil Nadu's dispute with neighboring Karnataka for sharing water from the Cauvery river. Such backing would no doubt force a walk-out from the bjp's coalition by its new-found ally in Karnataka, Ramakrishna Hegde. In the end, Jayalalitha's loyalists were given three cabinet posts and three minister-of-state portfolios. Among them was Sedapatti Muthiah, a former speaker of the Tamil assembly who once prostrated himself at Jayalalitha's feet. Returning to Madras from the the bjp's swearing-in ceremony, Jayalalitha was asked how long the coalition would last. "How should I know?" she retorted. "I'm not an astrologer." It doesn't take a soothsayer to predict that the bjp's marriage with the capricious Jayalalitha will be tempestuous and probably short-lived. -By Tim McGirk/New Delhi with additional reporting by R. Bhagwan Singh/Madras
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