By Papri Sri Rakan, IANS
Chennai : With Congress president Sonia Gandhi terming coalition politics in Tamil Nadu as a “challenge”, there is speculation here of some shift in the party’s alliances in the state.
While the expression of concern by the Congress leadership is seen as a go ahead to the state Congress to take an aggressive stand against the DMK, the Congress is fighting shy of taking on the state’s ruling party – yet.
The DMK has not responded to a state Congress resolution that said that the Congress would never forgive the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for assassinating former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi “on Tamil soil”.
“There is no need for us to get worked up,” says DMK spokesperson T.K.S. Elangovan. “The Congress-DMK alliance is as strong as ever.”
Not everyone thinks so.
It was an angry Congress leader and central minister of state E.V.K.S. Elangovan who sparked the rumblings in the Congress by asking how can ties with “people who sing elegy, take out rallies and put up posters for the death of a leader of a banned outfit which killed Rajiv Gandhi” be justified?
Elangovan’s outburst came after Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi wrote a poem paying tribute to slain LTTE leader S.P. Tamilselvan, the latest in a series of embarrassing positions adopted by the DMK.
Another Congress central minister, G.K. Vasan, was equally angry with the posters in support of Tamilselvan on Chennai’s walls.
Ever since the May 2006 victory of the Congress-DMK coalition in assembly elections, Elangovan and the state Congress leaders like Peter Alphonse have been demanding power sharing in Fort St. George, the state secretariat.
The DMK has repeatedly ignored the Congress plea, though it is for the first time since 1967 that the Tamil Nadu Congress has been so strong, with 34 legislators, 10 Lok Sabha members and three members in the Rajya Sabha.
In September came the DMK patriarch’s attack on Hindu god Ram, his calling Ram a drunk and similar such comments, which handed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Hindutva groups like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) a cause on a platter.
The DMK’s insistence on going ahead with the Sethusamudram shipping canal project despite a Supreme Court stay has also placed the Congress-led government in New Delhi on the backfoot.
On Nov 12, at a meeting of Congress legislators in Chennai, the party passed a resolution asking the Karunanidhi government “to ban all political outfits supporting the LTTE and mourning Tamilselvan’s death”.
The AIADMK’s position is less tolerant of the LTTE than even the Congress. AIADMK chief J. Jayalalitha minced no words in calling Karunanidhi a “traitor” for penning a tribute to Tamilselvan.
She said: “Karunanidhi should have been the first one to be arrested as he has not only written an elegy for Tamilselvan but also used the government machinery to circulate it to the media.”
In the same breath, she also called her political ally, MDMK’s Vaiko, also a “traitor”, for paying tribute to Tamilselvan.
MDMK leader Vaiko, known always as a sympathiser of the LTTE, was jailed for 19 months by the erstwhile Jayalalitha government. Now that Jayalalitha has again called him a “traitor”, speculation is rife that Vaiko may be ready to quit the AIADMK alliance.
Asked if she was ready to drop the MDMK, Jayalalitha replied: “Alliances are for the purpose of elections only.”
Jayalalitha’s visit to Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president M. Krishnasamy (he is recuperating from an attack on him in Ramanathapuram district two weeks ago) has also fuelled speculation that the Congress and the AIADMK have begun reaching out to each other.
However, the state Congress are so plagued by infighting that leaders like Krishnasamy and youth Congress leader Mayura S. Jayakumar have been physically assaulted by opponents within the party.
It will take a long time for the state Congress to stem infighting and acquire the strength to take on the DMK.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the DMK will have to offer something better than anti-Ram and pro-LTTE rhetoric to the Congress.