Chennai Corner

The Hunted Tiger
May 21. It is 18 years since former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated at an election rally in Sriperumbudur. Is it a coincidence or an irony that his nemesis Velupillai Prabhakaran has been found dead just a couple of days before the anniversary? Incidentally, the question needs to be asked whether thenews of the LTTE chief’s death before the poll here on May 13, would have given Amma the sweep everyone predicted for her AIADMK alliance instead of bringing back TN CM Karunanidhi as top dog, who now wants to put his son (Azhagiri),daughter (Kanimozhi) and grand nephew (Dayanidhi Maran) into the union cabinet. And would Vaiko who had threatened that there would be a "bloodbath" in Tamil Nadu if Prabhakaran was killed, have won hands down instead of losing by a mere 15,000-odd votes to a complete outsider called Manik Tagore, a youth Congress leader, whose mailing address for the last seven years has beenDelhi? While all that will be in the realm of speculation, what is old is the drama by various protagonists of the political stage, who had turned the Sri Lankan Tamil tragedy into a soap opera just to get votes. Karunanidhi, who some weeks ago shocked the nation with his "Prabhakaran is my good friend, he is not a terrorist" quote, choseto say, "I don’t want to say anything based on unconfirmed reports" when asked about Prabhakaran’s death.

Urban Legends
Cult figures have always spawned urban legends -- Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, some believe, went to Burma pre-independence and is still alive, the John F Kennedy shooting is still awhodunit, Che Guavara’s death swirls in mystery, and, closer home, Bhindranwala’s killing by the army in the Akal Takht in 1984 was not believed by many. Why, there are conspiracy theoriesabout man landing on the moon as well. And Prabhakaran’s death is no exception.

"Prabhakaran is alive, he will lead the movement. Rajapakse should be tried in the international criminal court," says the new MP from Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, Thol Thirumavalavan. Incidentally, Thiruma, who considered the LTTE chief as one of his idols, was seen at the high table, in a manner of speaking, this week when he accompanied Karunanidhi and his entourage to meet PM-designate Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

Vaiko too has said, "People shouldn’t believe the news on Prabhakaran," while Dravida Kazhagam’s Veeramanimaintains that Prabhakaran’s death was "a media-created sensation to help the Rajapakse government to get away with the genocide of 25,000 Tamils in the past few months."

But one of the fall-outs of the end of Prabhakaran could also mean that extreme Tamil outfits like the Tamil National Movement of P Nedumaran’s will have no agenda. The army chief of Sri Lanka Sarath Fonseca had got Vaiko all ruffled last December by calling him a "political joker" and accusing him of being on the payroll of the LTTE. The pro-LTTE outfits and even PMK’s S Ramadoss (who said the death of Prabhakaran had been "cooked" up by North Indian channels) upped the ante on the Sri Lankan, hoping to leverage it politically. But the election results tell another story because Vaiko and the PMK were whitewashed. AIADMK chief Jayalalitha who joined the bandwagon, even promising to send the army to get Sri Lankan Tamils a homeland, got her come-uppance from voters. Of course the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils is an emotive issue, but the average Tamil here voted for bijli, sadak, paani issues.

DNA Mapping?
Incidentally, the forensic science expert who helped the CBI Special Investigation Team (SIT) crack the Rajiv Gandhi case, has termed as "absurd" the Sri Lankan army’s claim that it had done a DNA mapping on the body of Prabhakaran. "DNA mapping can be done only if the army had samples of Prabhakaran’s DNA, obtained when he was alive, which is highly improbable," he said. DNA mapping could not be done in a hurry because it requires a minimum of four days. Besides, mapping could only be done in a laboratory, which the war zone is unlikely to have had. So is the army lying and Vaiko and company are entitled to believe that Prabhakaran is not dead?

Here’s logic from D R Karthikeyan, the director of the SIT which chargesheeted 26 persons including Prabhakaran for the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, "If the Sri Lankan government makes a false statement and suddenly Prabhakaran comes back alive, it will destroy the credibility of the government. It is quiteprobable that he is dead. What is the Sri Lankan army going to gain by giving a false statement?"

Gone Up in Smoke
Back in 1967, when the DMK led by Annadurai swept the polls, 76.56 per cent voted. In 1984, after the assassination of former PM Indira Gandhi, 72.98 per cent came out to vote. Since then, for the first time, this state recorded a high percentage of voting – a little over 72 per cent. The opposition was gleeful because, traditionally, high voting percentage is supposed to favour it, not the incumbent. But the opposition was wrong. 

Unlike national parties like the BJP, which accepted defeat gracefully, grace is not a strong point of losers here. AIADMK chief J Jayalalitha, who now has eight MPs in the 15th Lok Sabha as opposed to none in the 2004, counted her chickens before they were hatched preening as if she was already calling the shots in Delhi. Now she blames the DMK (no surprises there) for unleashing its money power to win votes. But of all the sore losers, PMK’s leader S Ramadoss has been the most graceless. "The EC stood as a mere spectator to the irregularities of the DMK men on polling day …shame on the EC . The CEO Naresh Gupta was a mere puppet. Idhai vida avar maadu meikka pogalam (instead of this he should have become a cowherd)," he said. Ouch! But from 5 seats to none must be hard to take, particularly when Ramadoss had visions of pelf and power in Delhi. This is one case where he believed in his own legendary capabilities of a weathervane and knew which way the wind was blowing. His party’s slogan was "victory is there where there is PMK". Talk of hype!

Meanwhile, TNCC Chief K V Thangabalu, who also bit the dust from Salem Lok Sabha constituency, put another spin on the PMK’s rout: "The election results show that political parties that betrayed the Congress have been defeated." But how do you explain the humiliating loss suffered by Congress big guns like himself and Mani Shankar Aiyar? And the way P Chidambaram barely made it to the victory post with a little over 3,000votes in the recount? In his case, he was up against Raja Kannappan, who had defected from the DMK to the AIADMK camp after elections were called. Isn’t it a rule of thumb that voters punish defectors?