Chennai: Speaking in the Tamil Nadu Assembly during the debate on the law and order grant demand, Chief Minister Vijay launched a sharp attack on the DMK, citing lines attributed to poet Kannadasan to criticise the party.
Vijay referred to recent remarks made by DMK members in the House, questioning the need for provocative language and personal attacks. He said such speeches were not politics and argued that repeated instances of this kind of talk were visible to the public.
He also objected to a senior DMK member’s comment suggesting that people who did not vote for certain parties would not even get a “good death”. Vijay said he could not understand how such words could be directed at the public, noting that the same people had supported those parties for decades.
Stressing that the people’s verdict must be accepted, he criticised attempts to justify abusive or hateful speech by claiming it was common in earlier political eras. He said only the good from past politics should be taken forward, and rejected what he called defamatory and indecent political culture.
Quoting Kannadasan, Vijay said the poet had summed up the DMK in a few words: “a lie one gets used to speaking, a hand one gets used to taking, a bag one gets used to putting.” He added that his government would not be built around any individual identity, and said its identity would be “Tamil, Tamils and Tamil Nadu”, reiterating that it would not touch even a rupee of public money and would not spare those who do.
