Columns

WIGNESWARAN: Cheers for Jayalalithaa’s comeback to power in Tamil Nadu but no tears for the dead in Lanka’s national flood tragedy

Something is stirring in the northern heartland of Jaffna and it is not the sprouting of the season’s first spring onions breaking ground and shooting off their presence. It has all the signs of blossoming into a full blown affair; but, alas, the darling buds of May may have to be nipped before they bloom for they do not augur well for the environs.

And it’s all taking place in the Chief Minister’s compound where a once dried up passion well seems to have been suddenly struck by a burst subterranean water vein, long untapped, long dormant and long forgotten to have even existed within that decrepit white frilled structure.

Since a clear and present danger remains that its’ rising swell may well breach its oval walls and spill in a freak flash flood and despoil again the fragile ecology of a recently blood drenched land, it must indeed become a matter of national concern to determine the way to damn its primordial source.

Not that the Jaffna people haven’t noticed it. Indeed they have. So much so their representatives on both sides of the provincial council have risen as one to protest against it and to prevent Chief Minister Wigneswaran from rushing to join in the celebrations of his counterpart in Tamil Nadu Jayalalithaa Jayaram on her election as the Chief Minister of that Indian state for the sixth term last week.

His plan to introduce a special resolution in the provincial council congratulating the matriarch of Tamil Nadu while ignoring the calamity the rest of the land experienced in a storm which left nearly 50 dead, over 100 missing and 3500 homeless, was stymied by the opposition and even by the members of his own party the TNA. As UPFA member Mr. Vijayathilaka said ‘what we should be doing is not to celebrate Jayalalithaa’s victory but empathise with the people who lost their lives in the recent disaster’.

Mr. Vijayathilaka said it was inappropriate for the NPC to adopt congratulatory motions for Indian politicians when the country had faced a natural disaster. The Vice Chairman of the Northern Provincial Council, a member of Wigneswaran’s own party the TNA Anton Jeganathan supported Vijayathilaka and opposed his own leader Wigneswaran. In a welcome show of unity, he condemned Wigneswaran’s move and stated that it was wrong to talk about Jayalalithaa when even foreign countries have come forward to help flood victims. ‘The council must first discuss the flood situation,’ he said.

So what made Wiggy even think of immortalizing Jayalalithaa’s victory in the northern provincial council annals when the rest of the country was still marking the roll call of those Lankans dead and searching for survivors in the Aranayake landslide? Where fled the judiciousness that had rested on his shoulders not so long ago and lined each brow with gravitas? Had the 76 year old finally lost his onions? Had he now to be force fed humble pie by his own minions?

Once it was Justicia with her scales and blindfolded eyes who adorned the Supreme Court pinnacle that caught the fancy of former Supreme Court Judge Visuvalingam Wigneswaran, wedded as he then was to the law.

Now it seems, that sacrosanct place in his heart is occupied by the nautch girl of Tamil cinema turned demi goddess of Tamil Nadu, the Great Amman as she is called by her devotees, the God Mother of the Tigers and now, once again the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

Politics has turned out to be a headier brew than the Palmyrah toddy Jaffna is famous for; and its deadly potency, it seems, can turn even a sagacious law lord to a infatuated schoolboy with a teenage crush.

But that’s not the end of the saga. Oh, no. What does it matter if the whole country beneath the Elephant Pass peninsula was under water when there is a tempest brewing in one’s own heart that must be given full vent before all else?

TIGER QUEEN JAYALALITHAA: On the prowl again in Tamil Nadu and invited by Wigneswaran to haunt the North again in Lanka

Undeterred by the snub he had received from his fellow councilors which would have prompted a greater man than Wignes to ponder tending his resignation, the chief minister plans, nevertheless, to pay his namaskaram to the deified dame across the Palk Strait by writing a personal letter of congratulations. Stuff the rest, he seems to indicate in scorn as he puts pen to paper, I will show Jayalalithaa that chivalry is not dead in Jaffna nor her contribution to the cause of Eelam forgotten.

Both sides of the northern council divide may have frustrated his determination to have the resolution in Jayalalithaa’s honour passed but none can prevent him from exercising his own personal freedom of expression and from extending his own personal best wishes to the woman next door in her hour of triumph. That is his right. And that is his folly.

Blinded by adulation in the manner of the poverty stricken teeming ignorant masses of Tamil Nadu who worship Jayalalithaa as their household goddess, this once bewigged Wiggy flings reason to the winds and embraces Jayalalithaa to his bosom, impressed with her triumphant well rinsed rise from the sewers of her corruption.

In that moment of fixation, her sordid corruption record ceases to exist, the 20 year litany of infamy ignored. The fact that a Bangalore trial court found her guilty two years ago of amassing assets of over Indian Rs 600 million without being able to show a legitimate source is dismissed as easily as the controversial Karnataka High Court judge quashed her conviction last year and held her to be as innocent as a newly fleeced lamb in God’s own lea.

Never mind that the Karnataka government has since appealed against the High Court judgment and, in the Supreme Court of India, has claimed Jayalalithaa’s miracle acquittal to be a ‘farce’, a travesty of justice. All that matters to Wigneswaran at this moment is that Jayalalithaa must be congratulated on her victory and that it must be placed on record that if Jaffna had refused to do the honours for whatever reason, at least, he – though a Vishwa- come-lately to Jaffna – has chosen to identify himself closely with the triumphant Jaya and share with her her unbridled joy, no matter how loose her morals.

He sends it off but keeps secret its contents. But Jayalalithaa is the sort who reads and tells. Last Saturday her Tamil Nadu government is ordered to spill the beans and release his letter along with Jaya’s reply. In his congratulatory message Wigneswaran gushes, “You have contested the polls without allying with any political party and it is a matter of pride. We express our happiness as you have returned back to power and we recognize the welfare schemes launched by your government have received tremendous support.”

Notice the royal ‘we’? When the people elected northern provincial council has rejected Wigneswaran’s resolution to officially congratulate Jayalalithaa and express happiness at her return to power, does Wigneswaran suffer delusions of grandeur to imagine that he can arrogate to himself the collective ‘we’ and speak on behalf of the northern province?

Enough that he callously thought fit to ignore the tragedy that was taking place at that moment in Lanka with thousands made homeless by the floods and over 100 feared dead. But has he no regard to the sensitivities of the majority race that made him rush headlong to wish the best and express happiness in the victory of a woman who used to gloat over the bodies of Sinhalese soldiers and civilians massacred by Tiger terrorists whom she fed, encouraged and gave safe haven to perpetrate their dastardliness again and again?

He may not have known of the horror the people of Jaffna endured under the Tiger regime, when even their own children were dragged out from their homes and forcibly recruited to the terrorist cadres and, brainwashed with Eelam ideology and with guns placed in their young hands, were commanded to kill or be killed. Neither would he have an inkling of the frustrations parents experienced when a whole generation of northern progeny had their education blighted by a ruthless terrorist war.

He may not have felt the fear the Tamils in Jaffna then felt living in perpetual dread of death nor shed the tears they then shed when their loved ones went missing or were reported killed; for he was safely ensconced in Colombo where he was born and bred and provided without discrimination the silver spoon of opportunity to rise to be a Supreme Court judge with the environment conducive for his two sons to be educated and to fall in love and take the hands of two Sinhalese brides.

Only a quirk of fate catapulted this ‘made in Colombo’ parcel of boorish insensitivity, to become the chief minister of a recently war torn province, still tottering to get on its feet just four years after peace had returned to the land. Even when his own party, the TNA has thought it best to keep the Tamil Nadu virago at arms length having learnt full well her ulterior purpose of exaggerating and exploiting the state of Lanka’s Tamils to boost her own image in Tamil Nadu for political gain, Wigneswaran unilaterally invites her to meddle in Lanka’s internal affairs on the basis that the northern people want to meet her.

In his note of congratulations to Jayalalithaa, he says: “The people of Northern Province have strong relations with Tamil Nadu and want to meet you to discuss areas of mutual interest. I expect our relations further get strengthened and I am keen to know about the areas that will be of mutual interests through a meeting with you.”

Jayalalithaa’s reply to this missive is: “As a Chief Minister of the state, I have taken steps to establish the rights of Sri Lankan Tamils during the last five years. I wish to inform you that I will continue to take steps through the Centre for getting justice for Tamils living in the Northern Province.”

And her vague response to his request to meet her to discuss areas of mutual interests disguised as a want of the northern people to meet her when it is really his own yearning to do so, leaves the solicited meeting in the air, when she tells him, “we shall meet at a mutually convenient time”, a diplomatic way of saying, no rush. The sort of ‘we must meet one of these days for a chat’ clichéd phrases one generally doles out to an old but forgotten acquaintance one has suddenly bumped into on a busy street.

Has the rise of Jayalalithaa’s ascendant star again in the Tamil Nadu firmament also raised old goblins in Wigneswaran and made him hallucinate that the revitalised voice of an old champion of Tiger terrorism will give megaphonic echo to his whimper? That by romancing her with liqourice words of sycophantic mantras, deifying her greatness to high heavens in coded stanzas as the preceptor and an object of reverence, she will once again be humoured to become the catalyst of change and the mouthpiece of flayed and silenced terrorism? That she, at whose altar many have sacrificed their lives, will infuse demonic lifeblood to raise Tiger ghouls back to life? That she will exploit the tentacles of her power to prod and assail the Central Government of India to intervene in the Eelamist cause and foist federalism upon this island as a stepping stone to a separate state? That she can be called upon to gather the firewood to build, upon the dying embers of Eelam, the pyre that would burn Lanka again in furious flames?

Or, perhaps, in his meditative melancholic moods, Jayalalithaa appears to him as the Goddess of Northern Tamil Prosperity, the new Lakshmi found incarnate in her and who must be wooed from her present residence at 36, Poes Gardens in Chennai to dwell in his humble Jaffna shrine; whose earthly triumph over her DMK asuras at the polls must first be celebrated and glorified in Jaffna; whose succor must then be beseeched to grant to the people of the north the impetus to strive for self-determination; and whose mythical munificence must be implored to make the churned milk of the Indian ocean and the sweet treacle of the Jaffna palm freely flow in floods to inundate the Utopian Tamil homeland they call Eelam.

As the nation strives to transcend the discords and marches on the road to reconciliation, it will be best for Mr. Wigneswaran – who last year, for no apparent reason, grievously hurt Sinhala sensitivities again when he complained to the UNCHR accusing the entire majority race of committing genocide against the Tamils – to indulge his fantasies of a separate state in private; and, keeping the Tiger Queen at bay, well across the Palk Strait, not to ejaculate the seeds of hatred and put at risk the blood-won peace of Lanka.

Herath’s hangover after drunk drive acquittal JVP propaganda secretary Vijitha Herath may have been sober as a judge or drunk as a lord when the luxury double cab he was driving suddenly veered off the road and crashed into a telecom pole on the Rajagiriya road at 12.30 Tuesday night. But he was never given a chance to prove his innocence or his temperance not merely beyond reasonable doubt but beyond all doubt. HERATH: Police bungle drunk drive charge The police charged him with the offence of driving under the influence of liquor merely because his breath smelt of liquor. They produced him before a JMO whose report, Mr. Herath’s lawyer claimed, could not be maintained to prove a drunk-driving charge since it stated that the amount of alcohol in his breath was not at an offensive level even though Mr. Herath’s breath smelt of liquor. Furthermore the defense counsel referred to a Supreme Court ruling that allegations of such nature cannot be maintained. The Colombo Additional Magistrate agreed and on Wednesday acquitted Mr. Herath of the drunk driving charge. Having pleaded guilty to reckless driving and failure to avoid a traffic accident, Mr. Herath was fined Rs. 1500 which he immediately paid having already paid to the state Rs 17,400 for damage caused to the telephone post. All’s well that ends well? Not really. Mr. Herath is a politician. Not a mere politician, like some swearing, brawling, punching thug found in the UNP or UPFA fold, but one who happens to be the propaganda secretary of the JVP which, after its blood soaked past, strives to portray itself as a puritanical Marxist party of incorruptible teetotalers who are still on mother’s milk. Mr. Herath’s first reaction to the media, before the Magistrate Court cleared him of the drunk driving charge, was to deny the allegation and claim, “I wasn’t under the influence of liquor at the time of the incident.’ He emphasized an attempt was been made to tarnish his image. “Certain websites and Facebook posts spreading false rumours alleged that I was drunk at the time of the accident. I reject these baseless allegations.” Even the JVP party leader Anura Dissanayake rushed to play a role. On the day of the Herath’s drunk drive case, he summoned a press conference and attempted to hold the nation riveted to his claim that an unseen hand was preventing the FCID from arresting six suspects. Later commenting on the acquittal of Herath on the drunk drive charge, he said, that Herath had left the party headquarters at Pelawatte and had been on his way at 12.30 in the night to “drop some essential food items at his home.’ “Mr. Herath was never drunk, though he was driving the vehicle,” he added. What a pity then, isn’t it, that the police did not follow the normal procedure – as they usually do in cases of suspected drunk driving – of subjecting Mr. Herath to a breathalyzer test at the cop station and thereafter a blood and urine test at the JMO’s office instead of depending solely on the keenness of their nose buds before filing a drunk drive charge? Had they done so it would have conclusively proved whether Mr. Herath had consumed alcohol that night and, if he had done so, whether it was over the allowed legal limit or not. Why the police neglected to take this course, and instead considered a fleeting liquor smell that had wafted on the night of the incident from Herath’s mouth would be irrefutable evidence sustainable in court the morning after, must be probed for by their abject failure they succeeded in placing upon Herath’s heel the mark of Achilles and provided enough ammo for his political foes to tarnish his image with the darts of doubt. Had proper procedure been followed it would have finally laid to rest the issue whether Mr. Herath was cold sober or dead drunk that Tuesday night and wouldn’t have left such a bad toxic taste in the mouth. And spared Herath a lifelong political hangover.