Speech writers deliver power quotes

By J.R.PRASAD

Hyderabad, March 24: The actor-turned politicians may get all the accolades and adulation for their “power-packed” speeches, but the words are not really their own. The real hard work is done by the professional speech writers who provide the politicians with verbal ammunition.

Be it the Telugu Desam to the Praja Rajyam, every political party relies on speech writers to prepare the “script” for their star campaigners.
All the dialogues delivered by Junior NTR during his state-wide tour is written by professionals. Tollywood’s noted dialogue writing duo — the Paruchuri brothers — are helping the young actor deliver the dialogues.
In fact, in the Telugu Desam, there is an exclusive wing at the NTR Trust Bhavan to prepare speeches for the party chief, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu and other campaigners like N. Balakrishna. This wing is now being headed by the former head of a news network. A few professional writers assist him in this job. Even if Mr Naidu is on a tour, this wing faxes him the speeches.
In the Praja Rajyam, Mr Vikram, a former journalist who earlier used to write speeches for Mr Naidu, is now writing the script for Chiranjeevi.
Recently, the TD chief acknowledged the role played by these writers when he reacted to the PR’s allegations that his party had planted spies in the PR.
“These are baseless allegations. In fact, the PR took away our leaders and also our staff in the media wing,” Mr Naidu had said.
However, writing a poll speech is not an easy affair. For example, a speech writer for Junior NTR needs to have a knowledge of the manner in which NTR spoke. The person writing speeches for Chiranjeevi should be able to explain socio-economic problems in layman’s terms.
“Chiranjeevi does not like personal criticism of his political rivals. I only provide him with facts when he wants to speak on a particular issue. The words are chosen by him,” said Mr Vikram, speech writer to Chiranjeevi.
When it comes to the Chief Minister’s speech writer, he should have a knowledge of the various developmental programmes being taken up by the government.
While the leaders can speak all they want, the voter will have the final say during the polls.