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Lanka a non-issue as TN goes to polls tomorrow
Election material on sale in a shop in Chennai. AFP
As 58 million Tamil Nadu voters march to more than 60,000 polling booths spread across the State, the questions being asked are whether AIADMK leader Jeyaram Jayalalithaa would become the first chief minister to be elected for a record third time since 1984 or whether the 93-year-old DMK leader Muthuvel Karunanidhi would become the oldest politician ever in India to be sworn in as the chief minister.
Though there are six political fronts vying for the top honours, the choice has narrowed down to the AIADMK and the DMK, the eternal rivals in Tamil Nadu politics. Let me make it clear that the outcome of Tamil Nadu election would not have any bearing on Sri Lanka as the so-called Tamil ethnic issue in the island nation has become a non-issue here in Tamil Nadu.
The only political party to come out with any kind of reference to Sri Lanka is the AIADMK. The manifesto of the party says the establishment of a separate Eelam is the one and only solution to address the problems of the Tamils. This is in stark contrast to the earlier stance of Jayalalithaa that Eelam would remain only as a pipe-dream. Jayalalithaa , whose AIADMK is fighting the election without any alliance partners, is leaving no stone unturned in the campaign because she badly needs a victory this time as it would finish off the DMK once and for ever.
If Eelam has been a major issue in Tamil Nadu, Vaiko, the MDMK leader would have reaped maximum benefits. Vaiko, is struggling to get elected even as a municipal councillor.
A politician who campaigns with Eelam as a theme is Seeman Sebastian, a Tamil chauvinist. Seeman is a supporter of LTTE and campaigns with the posters of LTTE and Veluppillai Prabhakaran. But he has no mass base anywhere in Tamil Nadu.
The key question in the 2016 assembly election is whether Jayalalithaa will set a new record in Tamil Nadu by returning to Fort Saint George (Tamil Nadu government’s seat of power in Chennai). Her mentor MG Ramachandran was the only politician in the State to win three consecutive elections (1977, 1980 and 1984). Since then the DMK and the AIADMK has been alternating the power between themselves.
If Jayalalithaa wins the 2016 assembly election, it will be a Grand Slam victory for her. Having won the 2011 assembly election and the 2014 Parliamentary election, the AIADMK chief is looking for a hat-trick. More than that, she knows well that if the DMK is defeated in this election, it would literally wipe out Karunanidhi from the political history of Tamil Nadu. The nonagenarian leader has one more ambition in life. He knows that this is his last election and time is not with him. If Karunanidhi has to get a permanent position in Tamil Nadu’ s political history, he has to get a memorial at Chennai’s Marina Beach which houses the tombs of DMK founder C.N. Annadurai and AIADMK founder M.G. Ramachandran. Karunanidhi wants to be buried close to Annadurai’s memorial. But that could be done only if the DMK comes to power.
Karunanidhi became the president of the DMK in 1969 following the death of Annadurai. Since then he continues to be the president and his life’s ambition is to break the record of Fidel Castro whose tenure as the head of the Cuban Communist Party from 1961 to 2011 is a world record. For that to happen, Karunanidhi should continue as the party president till 2020, and he would be 97 by that time. If his Maker does not call him back before 2020, the Grand Old Man of Tamil Nadu politics will certainly create the new world record because to date, there is no one to challenge him in the DMK. He has seen to it that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (Tamil for Dravida Progressive Party) has been converted into Dravida Munnetra Kudumbam (Kudumbam is Tamil for Family). The DMK is dominated by family members of Karunanidhi. His children from three wives and nephews and grand-nephews control the party structure and only those servile to them could rise in the party hierarchy.
The Congress, described as India’s largest political party has been obliterated from Tamil Nadu by some brilliant machinations of Karunanidhi. India’s largest political party is surviving in Tamil Nadu because of the crutches and support provided by the DMK. The DMK claims it withdrew support to the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre in 2013 because of the government’s failure to make the United Nations Human Right Council pass a resolution condemning the “atrocities” committed by the Lankan government on Tamils during the last phase of the 2009 Eelam war. But what is the truth? It was only a façade and the real reason was something else.
Karunanidhi wanted the Manmohan Singh government to clear his daughter, Kanimozhi, of bribery charges. The UPA government refused to oblige. She was accused of receiving Rs. 225 crore as kickbacks from one of the telecommunication companies. Hence the DMK’s decision to pull out of the UPA government, citing the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka as the reason. By 2014 he had patched up with the Congress to get Kanomozhi elected to the upper house of Parliament from Tamil Nadu. The Congress and the DMK are allies in the 2016 assembly election. If someone asks Karunanidhi for reasons for the DMK’s withdrawal of support to the UPA government in 2013, he just smiles. For Karunanidhi, what matters are his wives, children and grandchildren.
Every election time Sri Lanka finds mention in the manifestos of these parties. Both Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi are engaged in a wordy duel over Kachachatheevu, a tiny islet ceded to Sri Lanka by India in 1974 following an accord between the two countries. Karunanidhi, who was the chief minister at that time says he was against the transfer of Kachchatheevu to Sri Lanka. But there are no official records of Karunanidhi’s opposition to the deal.
Jayalalithaa had filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India challenging the transfer of the islet and pleading for the quashing of the deal. The Supreme Court asked the Narendra Modi government about the status of Kachchatheevu and the last word on it was announced by Mukul Rohatgi, the Attorney General of India. He told the Supreme Court that the islet belonged to Sri Lanka and there was no possibility of retrieving it. “The only way of getting it back from Sri Lanka is by waging a war against the island nation,” the Attorney General told the court in a lighter vein.
The government of India, in response to a Public Interest Litigation in Madras High Court had told the court that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty over Kachachatheevu is settled, and Tamil Nadu fishermen cannot fish in that region. That puts to rest all questions on Kachachatheevu.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his election rally at Vedaranyam in Nagapattinam district on Wednesday asked fishermen in the region to opt for deep sea fishing as his government has introduced attractive financial packages for purchasing mechanised boats. Modi was indirectly telling the fishermen in the region to keep away from Sri Lankan waters.
The Tamil Eelam is a dead horse as far as Tamil Nadu is concerned. This is because Tamil Nadu itself is facing severe problems like slow infrastructure development and industrialisation. The major issue haunting the State is a drinking water shortage. Farmers in the Cauvery Delta region (the districts of Thanjavur, Thiruvaroor, Tiruchi, Nagapattinam and Cuddalore) are looking skywards for divine intervention so that there will be sufficient water in Cauvery. Tamil Nadu is fighting a legal battle with its neighbouring States of Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh over water.
Whoever wins in the May 16 election to the Tamil Nadu assembly, it will make no change in the Centre’s approach to Sri Lanka. Prime Minister Modi has made it clear that his government would not be a party to anything detrimental to the security and integrity of Sri Lanka. The election manifesto of People’s Welfare Front led by Vaiko is silent about Kachchatheevu or Tamil Eelam. The Eelam issue continues to be in the public domain in Tamil Nadu because a number of politicians, writers, social activists and journalists survive on the funds made available by LTTE elements. If a book about the beauty of Sri Lanka is published in Tamil Nadu there won’t be any takers for the same. But write a book eulogising Prabhakaran and his antecedents and it would be sold like hot cakes. So much for Eelam in Tamil Nadu.
It is difficult to forecast the outcome of the 2016 assembly election because of the number of political formations in the battlefield. There are six fronts fighting it out in the open. The last five years saw Jayalalithaa launching a series of welfare measures like Amma Hotels where one gets idli for Rs. 1 and sambar rice (Tamilian’s staple food) for Rs. 5. There were no major corruption charges or scams involving the government. Hence there is no visible anti-incumbency feeling against Jayalalithaa. Whether she would be able to mobilise the people to vote for her is the factor which decides the result to be announced on May 19.
The DMK has some inherent problems like the rivalry between Stalin and Azhagiri, Karunanidhi’s two sons by his second wife Dayalu Ammal. Azhagiri, based in Madurai, has said that he would oppose any move by Karunanidhi to anoint Stalin as successor to the patriarch. Azhagiri commands considerable influence in Southern Tamil Nadu and is capable of derailing Karunanidhi’s dream of becoming chief minister of Tamil Nadu for the sixth time.
Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi and grandnephews Marans, are accused in the Rs 1,76,000 crore spectrum scam and face arrest anytime. Stalin is neither impressive nor articulate -unlike Jayalalithaa.
What stands in Jayalalithaa’s way is the directive issued by the Tamil Nadu Bishop’s Council and the Church of South India to their laity asking them to vote for the DMK-Congress combine. There are 4.8 million Christians in Tamil Nadu and their stance is crucial as the Hindu voters would get dissipated among different political formations.
If Jayalalithaa plays her cards well, she is on her way to score a hat-trick as well as a Grand Slam. Whether 93-year old Karunanidhi, confined to a wheel chair and pushed around the State by daughters Selvi and Kanimozhi would get the sympathy of Tamil Nadu voters is also to be seen. As the campaign came to a close Saturday, the score board shows an advantage to Jayalalithaa. But it is still an open game, and Karunanidhi could make it a deuce if he plays a couple of aces.