Beyond farce

(April 18, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The ever-vexatious Sri Lanka issue has again given the politicians in Tamilnadu to go on a dangerous brinkmanship binge. A day AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa and her new-found allies took the two-timing DMK to ask for being duplicitous on the strife in Lanka, Chief Minister and DMK chief M Karunanidhi has suddenly upped the ante.

He has shot off a missive to the Centre to snap ties with the Lankan government. This because the Mahinda Rajapakse government is not ready for a permanent ceasefire. Wily and always playing self-focussed politics, Karunanidhi has made so many twists and turns s on the issue that if he were in a theme park he would be a roller-coaster by now.

The pro-LTTE parties, by virtue of their closeness to the organisation, are working with a single point agenda of enforcing a ‘ceasefire’ by hook or crook in order to save the Tiger Chief Prabakaran. Started by the PMK and followed by the Left parties, the DMK, the AIADMK the DMDK, the MDMK and the VCK, all are showcasing their love for the ‘LTTE’ in the name of ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’.

The Tamil filmdom, which is the another face for TN politics in the same coin is also again going to organise a ‘fast’ on the issue. It is all gone beyond the point of even being classified as a farce. The Central government, for obvious reasons of cheap political gains, has consistently turned a blind eye to dangerous talks of separatism and support for terrorism in Tamilnadu.

Had it happened elsewhere, say a State like Gujarat, all hell would have broken loose. What kind of moral fibre is the Congress made of. Its chief Sonia Gandhi did not think twice about aligning with the DMK whose sympathies for the Tigers — the proven killers of her husband — were well established. It is so disgusting that it makes you to puke. All these orchestrated drama, it is being hoped by vested interests, would help Prabakaran gain time to regroup, reequip and resurge.

But it is most unlikely that the Sri Lankan government would accede to a ceasefire demand, as it has already surrounded Prabakaran’s bastion by waging the final war. Having reached this decisive stage, it would not go back from its determined stand of finishing the LTTE.

As Prabakaran is a proclaimed offender in India, the Centre cannot afford to lift the ban on the LTTE. To satisfy the Tamilnadu government, the Centre may make some placatory noises to suit the election climate. But beyond that it will be usual politics. The cause of hapless Tamils in Lanka is the least thing in the mind of these parasitical politicians.

-Sri Lanka Guardian