Politicos steal catchwords shamelessly

BY J.R.PRASAD

Hyderabad, April 21: Top politicos of rival parties have no love lost for each other. But that did not prevent them from borrowing each other’s slogans and catchwords lavishly.

The speeches they made during the hectic campaign for the 2009 polls prove this amply.
Whether it was a populist scheme, a slogan, phrase, gesture or an epithet, politicians copied everything from each other with no compunction.
The Telugu Desam’s star campaigner, Balakrishna, copied Praja Rajyam chief Chiranjeevi’s moustache twirling and thigh slapping acts.
Chiranjeevi created furore through these gestures while he conducted a road show in Pulivendula, the constituency of the Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, prior to the election campaign.
Later, Balakrishna performed the same act in front of the house of his sister and Union minister, Ms Purandeshwari. He then kept on doing it all along the campaign trail and even claimed that twirling of moustache was the trademark of the Nandamuri clan.
After the CPI state secretary, Mr K. Narayana, termed the Chief Minister a Kallu Tagina Koti (drunken monkey), the phrase was picked up by the Telugu Desam chief, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu.
Even while ridiculing the Chief Minister using the CPI leader’s coinage, Mr Naidu copied Dr Reddy’s comment that the Praja Rajyam train had only an engine and no bogies. Later, Balakrishna also picked it up.
Not to be left behind, Chiranjeevi also outdid his political rivals in mimicking. He borrowed the Chief Minister’s epithet “all-free- Babu” to ridicule the TD chief. Inspired by Chiranjeevi, Mr Allu Aravind also started using the phrase. Chiranjeevi also copied all the phrases used by Mr Naidu to attack the Chief Minister.
The TD chief might have snapped his ties with the BJP, but Mr Naidu found nothing wrong in taking up the senior BJP leader, Mr L.K. Advani’s call to bring back the black money stacked in Swiss banks.
When Dr Rajasekhar Reddy blamed the Telugu Desam for casting an evil-eye on the irrigation projects, Mr Naidu said Junior NTR had met with an accident because of Congress’s evil-eye.