DMK working president and Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly M.K. Stalin said that all the MLAs of his party would vote against the motion of confidence to be moved by the new Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Saturday in the Assembly.
Talking to reporters at the party headquarters after chairing a meeting of the party MLAs here on Friday, Mr. Stalin said the DMK had been insisting that the Governor should intervene to resolve the current political crisis. In such a scenario, the Assembly was meeting and Mr. Palaniswami, representing the AIADMK (Sasikala) faction, who was sworn-in as Chief Minister on Thursday, would move a motion of confidence to prove that he enjoys the majority.
“Under the AIADMK rule, law and order had deteriorated drastically and the rights and livelihood of the Tamils have been totally affected. Therefore, all the 89 DMK MLAs would participate [in the motion of confidence] and vote against the confidence motion to register their opposition to the AIADMK rule,” Mr. Stalin said.
Asked if the DMK favoured a secret ballot to decide on the outcome of the confidence motion, he said that the party would welcome it if that happened and that they were ready for it. On the stance of its electoral ally Congress, Mr. Stalin said he only learnt from television news channels that the Congress would also vote against Mr. Palaniswami. “I saw it only on television,” he said. [The Congress, however, said it would take a decision only by 9 a.m. on Saturday].
“You have waited for so long. Wait till tomorrow,” he said when asked to predict the result of the confidence motion. To a question on the ruling party MLAs still staying in a resort in Koovathur, Mr. Stalin quipped that the Panneerselvam faction celebrated when the Supreme Court found Jayalalithaa guilty in the disproportionate assets case. Likewise, the AIADMK (Sasikala) MLAs were celebrating at the resort for the jail term given to Sasikala.
