Tigers stalk the ballot box

By Sudha Ramachandran

Even as the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) observed a two-day ceasefire in the island early this week, the LTTE and its supporters are heating things up in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu with threats and vitriolic speeches.

While Indian intelligence agencies have raised an alarm that the LTTE could attack senior political leaders in the country, politicians in Tamil Nadu known for their links to the LTTE just a few score kilometers across the Palk Strait have threatened bloodshed in the state if LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran comes to any harm.

India's month-long elections for 543 seats in the Lower House of parliament, the Lok Sabha, began on Thursday, with voting taking place in five phases - Tamil Nadu votes in the last phase on May 16 to elect 39 representatives.

Last week, security officials warned of a possible threat to the lives of Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul and daughter Priyanka from the LTTE. Sonia and Rahul, both members of parliament, are contesting in the polls and have been campaigning for Congress across the country.

Sonia is the widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber in May 1991 while campaigning at Sriperumpudur in Tamil Nadu.

Indian intelligence operatives believe that the Gandhi family is once again on the LTTE radar as it is furious with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government for not pressuring the Sri Lankan government to halt its military operations against the battered LTTE. Also thought to be high on the LTTE's hit list is the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, whose Dravida Munetra Kazhagam (DMK) party is a close ally of the Congress.

The LTTE has suffered grievously in the war over the past two years and has lost all the territory it once controlled in the north and east of the island. The Tigers are now reportedly confined to a 17-square-kilometer "no-fire zone".

While the LTTE has refuted reports that it has the Gandhi family in its crosshairs, media and politicians known to be close to the Tigers have made vituperative attacks on Sonia, holding her responsible for the LTTE's military debacle. According to pro-LTTE media, it is because of Sonia that India is quietly supporting the Sri Lankan government's ongoing military campaign to once and for all destroy the LTTE.

An Indo-Asian News Service report has drawn attention to a commentary in the Puthinam website, reportedly linked to the LTTE's political wing, which argues that Sonia is determined to wipe out the LTTE. She "will not sleep in peace till the last nail is hammered on Prabhakaran's coffin", it says, blaming Sonia for the suffering of the Tamils and concluding that it is India, not Sri Lanka, that is their enemy.

As venomous in their attacks on Sonia are pro-LTTE Indian politicians such as V Goplalaswamy, aka Vaiko, leader of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munetra Kazhagam (MDMK). In speeches last week, Vaiko, a strident supporter of the LTTE who has vociferously campaigned for the Tigers to be de-proscribed, hurled abuse at the government, holding it responsible for Tamils being killed in Sri Lanka. "They've supplied arms, they've supplied radars, they've sent military for the genocide of Lankan Tamils," Vaiko alleged.

"If anything happens to Prabhakaran, rivers of blood would flow in Tamil Nadu," he thundered at a rally, warning that India wouldn't remain a united country, that is, Tamils would secede from the country if the war against the LTTE was not stopped.

"It has been quite a long time and we have forgotten what happened in Sriperumbudur," Vaiko said, in a chilling reminder of what the LTTE is capable of - the LTTE's suicide bombing of Rajiv Gandhi 18 years ago.

For the first time in many years, the Sri Lankan Tamil issue is at the center of the Tamil Nadu election battleground. This is thanks to the efforts of a host of LTTE sympathizers in the state, such as P Nedumaran, Thol Thirumavalavan and Vaiko. For several years, these leaders have been openly campaigning for a lifting of the ban on the LTTE. In the past two years, with the war going against the LTTE, these leaders have organized rallies, strikes and marches to pressure Delhi to take a more pro-LTTE stand.

While their efforts have cut no ice with the government, it has worked in stirring sympathy for the Sri Lankan Tamils and in turning the public mood in Tamil Nadu in favor of the LTTE. Opinion polls indicate significant sympathy for the LTTE. This is no small achievement, considering the revulsion the LTTE's brutal methods have evoked among sizeable sections of the population since Rajiv's assassination.

With public sentiment now sympathetic to the Sri Lankan Tamils and to some extent to the LTTE, being seen to be unsympathetic to the plight of the Lankan Tamils would be disastrous this poll season. Parties have therefore protected themselves by expressing support to the Sri Lankan Tamils in their manifestoes and/or organizing hunger strikes and rallies on the issue.

The DMK and the Congress are on the defensive, fighting off accusations from the opposition alliance led by the All-India Anna DMK (AIADMK) and pro-LTTE parties like the MDMK and the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) that the UPA government has ignored the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils and failed to "protect the Tamil race from genocide" by the Sri Lankan government.

The decibel-level of speeches by politicians like Vaiko and others would suggest that it is the Sri Lankan problem that is the main issue in the Tamil Nadu elections. It is true that this issue has dominated media coverage of the poll in recent weeks. But the important question is whether this factor will determine how people vote.

In the 1991 election that followed Rajiv's assassination, the DMK, which was then in power in Tamil Nadu, was wiped out. Its brazen support of the LTTE from 1988 to 1991 was resented by the Tamil Nadu electorate, which blamed the party for the assassination and punished it at the election.

But in the years that followed, it has been caste, corruption and governance that have determined how people voted. The Sri Lankan Tamil issue was not a factor. The steady improvement in the PMK's electoral performance for instance must be attributed to caste factors, not its pro-Tiger rhetoric.

Political commentators say that in this election, too, while the Sri Lankan Tamil issue is raising the political temperature in Tamil Nadu and anxiety levels in Colombo, it will be issues of governance, development and corruption that will dominate in most constituencies.

This will put the DMK-Congress combine at a disadvantage. As the ruling alliance in the federal and state governments, it is likely to come up against an anti-incumbency vote. Moreover, the opposition AIADMK has managed to pull in more parties - the PMK, MDMK and the left as its allies.

The MDMK and the PMK are expected to do well. How will that impact on the post-poll scenario? These are small parties, contesting just four and seven seats, respectively in the elections. These figures might seem small in a 543-seat Lower House, but in an election which is expected to throw up a very close result these numbers will be significant. They could wield influence far greater than their numbers would suggest.

It is difficult to forecast their post-poll moves as it is not ideology but political expediency that has guided the strategies of Tamil Nadu's parties. Consider this: his fiercely pro-LTTE position notwithstanding, Vaiko is in a seat-sharing arrangement with J Jayalalithaa, leader of the AIADMK, who was responsible for dismantling the LTTE network in Tamil Nadu in the 1990s. He has been careful not to make his pro-LTTE speeches when he shares the campaign platform with Jayalalithaa.

The MDMK and the PMK might be spewing venom on the Congress today, but the possibility of either switching sides in the event of the UPA coalition returning to power cannot be ruled out. The PMK has said so in so many words.

There is some concern that should the pro-LTTE parties do well, they will demand a more pro-LTTE position as the price of their support. But this is unlikely to determine which alliance they will support post-elections. For all their rabble-rousing speeches on the Tigers, it is the fruits of power - how many ministers and which portfolios - that will decide which alliance they will eventually back.