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DMK upset over Advani's silence on dismissal demand

N Sathiya Moorthy in Chennai

The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazagham in Tamil Nadu is upset over Union Home Minister L K Advani's silence over the opposition's demand for the dismissal of the Karunanidhi government.

The opposition, led by the Congress, the All India Anna DMK and the Tamil Maanila Congress, had raised the dismissal issue in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday, while moving a calling attention motion on the Veerappan issue.

Advani's reply, DMK sources say, stopped with commending the Karunanidhi government for promising to extend the ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam when due in May this year, but did not reject the dismissal demand.

"This was not the way the Bharatiya Janata Party had reacted when the dismissal of the BJP governments in Uttar Pradesh or elsewhere had been demanded in the past," says a DMK leader.

"With the dismissal demand, the Congress, which is ruling in Karnataka, has also been allowed to shift the focus from Dr Rajakumar abduction to pan-Tamil militancy using the LTTE and the Rajiv Gandhi assassination as an excuse. It has now given a new focus, if not purpose for the AIADMK and the TMC to come on the same side."

These sources do not totally rule out the fallout of the 'Veerappan issue' affecting the DMK's image in the assembly elections next year. "The AIADMK is seeking to take the electoral focus away from the corruption cases haunting the party leadership, and could do with anything to hit the DMK with."

As may be recalled, the Rajiv Gandhi assassination cost the DMK the 1991 elections, which was the worst ever for the party since it entered electoral politics in 1959.

The DMK drew a blank in the Lok Sabha and managed only the lone seat of Karunanidhi (Chennai Harbour) from among the 234 assembly seats in 1991.

Likewise, the DMK-TMC combine was badly hit by the Coimbatore serial blasts in 1998 Lok Sabha polls.

If the pan-Tamil sympathies from a past era mauled the DMK in 1991, the party leadership's hesitation to be seen as antagonising the sympathetic Muslim community, became an electoral embarrassment in 1998.

For, it was not just the assassination in the first case, and the serial blasts by themselves in the second, that did the party in. It was the voter's perception of the DMK's reluctance while in power, to come down heavily and whole-heartedly on forces sympathetic to the respective causes that cost it dearly in the elections.

That way, the continued leadership of Karunanidhi, both of the party and its government, whenever it came to power in the last 30 years, may have also contributed in a way.

"Once you factor in Karunanidhi's possible reaction to a given situation, to a given issue, then the voter can be manipulated," said an informed source.

"And that may be happening all over again," he added.

Thus, the Veerappan issue involving his pan-Tamil associates, may be just a beginning, not the end.

"Only the Dr Rajakumar abduction has been resolved, not the larger issues. They have just commenced, and may drag on till the elections in one form or the other," the source said.

In this context, the source refers to the Padmanabha killing preceding the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, and the Coimbatore riots, six months ahead of the Coimbatore blasts, both coming to expose the Karunanidhi government and leadership, when subsequent incidents occurred.

"The dismissal demand," argues the DMK source, "could prove mischievous, if it is not stalled in the track."

To that extent, a section of the DMK leadership would like the party and the state government to play the Veerappan issue, safe and hard. "Once the party was stamped as sympathetic to the LTTE cause with the Padhmanabha killing, we could not escape the moral responsibility of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, in the voter's perception. That was also the case with the Coimbatore blasts. Now the Rajakumar abduction could lead to that kind of a conclusion if any election-eve incident of the kind, rocks the boat. There would then be those who would come up with the 'we-said-so' lines, and the DMK for its part would not be able to defend itself."

To that end, the source wants the Centre to see through the electoral possibilities of such a plank, and act decisively on the political front. For its part, they want the DMK state sovernment to let the Centre handle the 'nab-Veerappan' campaign, "which anyway, the Special Task Force of the police forces from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are ill-equipped to handle. At least, the DMK need not have to look suspicious in the eyes of the voter, the kind of situation that had been exploited in the past, and the kind of 'emotional appeal' the future can hold."

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