21 Oct, 2008, 0345 hrs IST, ET Bureau
NEW DELHI: The DMK has painted itself into a corner on the Sri Lankan issue. Having set the Centre a October 29 deadline to ensure a cease-fire be
tween Sri Lankan armed forces and LTTE in that country, DMK could now experience a major crisis of credibility.
Though it has threatened to get its MPs resign from Parliament over the Sri Lankan issue if the Centre does not sufficiently influence the situation in the neighbourhood by end-October, ground realities make this next to impossible. Mr Karunanidhi is already showing signs of tempering his position. He has welcomed a statement made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh where he called for a peaceful political settlement to the crisis in the island nation.
The DMK’s difficulty in taking any dire step stems from insufficient numbers in the 234-member Tamil Nadu assembly. To survive in power, the DMK with 96 MLAs needs the Congress support. It cannot afford to call a mid-term assembly polls on the Sri Lankan issue.
Many political watchers are describing DMK’s whipping up of the Sri Lankan Tamil issue as a diversionary tactic in view of the massive power cuts in the state. Many parts of Tamil Nadu, with the exception of Chennai, are experiencing eight hours power cut a day or more. Also, the Sri Lankan issue, which is brought up by Tamil parties regularly before elections, has a limited popular appeal as evidenced by the fact that these very parties forget it until the next round of polls.
The Centre, for its part, is making all the right noises about concern for the welfare of ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka, who according to DMK and other Tamil parties are innocent victims of the attacks on LTTE. However, India’s hands are tied on the question of any real intervention in Sri Lankan affairs.
Sri Lanka has shown no signs of discontinuing with its current offensive against LTTE or reducing the intensity of the attacks. The statement made by Sri Lankan defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to a TV channel that the LTTE is on the verge of defeat and therefore it is getting Indian politicians to pressure the Sri Lankan government to intervene, might complicate matters further for the Congress-led Centre.
DMK’s move to get its MPs from both Houses of Parliament (15 Lok Sabha and 4 Rajya Sabha) to hand over symbolic resignation letters to party chief M Karunanidhi looks set to fizzle out. When this happens, the Opposition ADMK will claim that it was justified in dubbing the resignation episode a fraud. ADMK chief Ms Jayalalithaa had dared chief minister Karunanidhi to step down and asked him to get all his MLAs to resign if he is really concerned about the condition of ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Interestingly, it is only DMK which has stuck its neck out to meet the resolution of an all-party meeting in Chennai which had said all 40 Lok Sabha MPs, from Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, would resign if India did not intervene to ensure cease-fire in Sri Lanka. The Congress, which also backed the resolution of the all-party meeting, clearly distanced itself from the resignation threat.
“We follow whatever is decided by the Indian National Congress. So far we have not offered our resignations,” Congress spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Jayanti Natarajan said on Monday. PMK too has not taken any further steps on the resignation threat. As things stand, DMK stands to lose face on the Sri Lankan episode in the run-up to the coming Lok Sabha polls.
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