Oh Ganesha! Chiru has to start all over again

The entire country is celebrating Vinayaka Chavithi on Sunday. Everybody prays Lord Ganesha first before praying any other god, since He gives a good beginning to any activity. Perhaps, Praja Rajyam Party president Chiranjeevi needs to make a fresh beginning on this auspicious day. The last one year in his political career has not been very enterprising or encouraging for him. All the goodwill he had gained during his three-decade old film career has disappeared and he had to receive more brickbats than bouquets. In spite of his best efforts, he could not bring the PRP into power and what is worse, the media has virtually hounded him and exposed his lack of leadership abilities, as one leader after the other started deserting the PRP. Thus, he lost one precious year in his political career.
Now, the PRP president is determined to make a fresh beginning in politics, forgetting the past. As senior PRP leader Kotagiri Vidyadhara Rao commented, the negative reports in the media against Chiranjeevi, in a way, had helped him sit and think new strategies. First of all, he has realised that it is not so easy to take on the mighty Congress and the Telugu Desam, leave alone coming to power. So, his first objective is to establish the party firmly in the state with a strong cadre base and build up the party organisation from grass-root level.
Chiranjeevi made one interesting remark on his birthday on Saturday. He said the success of his son Ramcharan’s film “Magadheera” was a good omen for the resurrection of the PRP. A day before, he also made a comment that nobody would pluck the party’s flag, as long as it was deeply rooted in the hearts of his supporters; and that nobody could remove his image he had held in the hearts of the people for 30 years.
This clearly shows Chiranjeevi is once again banking on the support of his own fans and also that of his son Ramcharan Teja and brother Pawan Kalyan. It this thinking is correct, then Chiranjeevi is grossly mistaken. Fans alone cannot make a political party. They were just a miniscule percentage of the total electorate. And it was pretty evident that Chiranjeevi’s fans did not come to his rescue in the last elections. On the other hand, they betrayed the party by deliberately defeating the candidates in many places.
He has to convince the people that there is the third alternative party in the state, which could give a new dimension to politics and administration. In a way, the PRP should follow the path of Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh, which was only a third alternative to the Congress and the BJP in the beginning, but later emerged as the most powerful party in the state and finally come to power on its own. It should be a long-term strategy.
For that, Chiranjeevi needs to develop his own political philosophy and ideology. He has to have his own policies on welfare, development, social and economic fronts. Only then can people view the PRP as different from the Congress and the TDP.