Chennai, March 20: M. Karunanidhi’s response to any development on the Sri Lanka Tamil issue continues to border on the comic with the DMK president trying desperately to reclaim his position as champion of the Tamils, a position usurped by Jayalalithaa.
Yesterday Karunanidhi read out a draft of the resolution that the party would have debated and passed at its high-level committee meeting scheduled for today. The resolution declared withdrawing from the UPA government and extending only issue-based support from outside.
But since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday told the Lok Sabha that India was “inclined” to vote in favour of the US-backed UN resolution asking Colombo to punish those guilty of war crimes on Sri Lankan Tamils in 2009, Karunanidhi cancelled the high-level committee meeting and also hurriedly announced a one-day fast on Friday, when the resolution would be debated in Geneva.
According to party sources the Congress was already privy to the DMK’s so-called threat, thereby prompting the Prime Minister to come out with the appropriate response. “In this case the response came before the threat was placed officially,” said a DMK MP.
While the Prime Minister’s assurance neutralised the DMK’s probable pull out threat, Karunanidhi still went ahead and publicised what he had planned to do but would not carry out.
It was yet another weak attempt by the DMK boss to prove his Tamil credentials vis-a-vis the Lankan Tamil issue.
“Where was the need to read out a resolution that was not debated, leave alone passed by the high-level committee? Karunanidhi is desperate to win back the confidence of the Tamil diaspora which he had lost by being silent when the LTTE was defeated by the Sri Lankan army,” observed Thuglak editor Cho Ramaswamy.
In 2008, Karunanidhi had taken the resignations of all DMK MPs to demand the Centre’s intervention to stop the war in Sri Lanka. After a few ostensible diplomatic exercises by the then external affairs minister, Pranab Mukherjee, Karunanidhi withdrew the threat saying he did not want to destabilise the UPA government.
Also, just before the 2009 Lok Sabha election, he went on a half-day fast demanding an end to the use of heavy weaponry on the civilians.
As if on cue, home minister P. Chidambaram relayed the information that the Sri Lankan government had agreed to the demand thereby ending Karunanidhi’s fast between breakfast and lunch.
That drama actually made the DMK boss a laughing stock of the Tamil world and he was accused of betraying the Sri Lankan Tamil cause by such inane tokenism.
Similarly the latest disclosure of a probable pull out from the UPA government that never happened has once again exposed him to further ridicule. “The pull out announcement should have come when S.M. Krishna gave a totally non-committal reply on the issue last week. But to claim that ‘I would have pulled out if the Centre had done this,’ is just a joke gone bad,” observed CPI secretary D. Pandian.
On the other hand, Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa has stolen Karunanidhi’s Tamil thunder by passing resolutions against the alleged war crimes and demanding an economic boycott of Colombo.
Every attempt by the DMK veteran to retrieve that honour has proved to be even more disastrous and even laughable.
