Vaiko roars in renewed pitch on Eelam against MK

Vaiko, the indomitable Eelam supporter, has suddenly raised his voice against his former leader M Karunanidhi, setting the tone for a pitched battle against him. Peeved at the DMK president, who suddenly took up the cause of Tamil Eelam by reviving the Tamil Eelam Supporters Organisation (TESO) after keeping mum when the Tamils in Sri Lanka were massacred, Vaiko launched a broadside against Karunanidhi.

When late LTTE chief V Prabakaran’s mother, Parvathiammal, wanted to come to India for medical treatment as a wheel-chair bound patient, she was packed off in the same flight when Karunanidhi was the chief minister and his party was part of the UPA government. Now pointing out that incident, Vaiko wondered recently in Tiruchy if the same Karunanidhi was trying to help Eelam through TESO now.

Apart from being very critical of Karunanidhi’s latest move, Vaiko called him a traitor, who betrayed the Sri Lankan Tamils in their struggle. His party organ, Sangoli carried scathing editorial that described the DMK chief as an opportunist. Earlier, in an interview to a Tamil magazine, Vaiko described the revival of TESO as a farce and said that the DMK itself has lost its credibility among the people.

Of course, it is not new for Vaiko to criticise the DMK or its chief. Every since he was thrown out of the DMK in 1994, at a time when he was emerging as the second most popular in the party after Karunanidhi, Vaiko, who was then V Gopalsamy, missed no opportunity to spew venom against his former leader, and his style of functioning.

After launching his own party, the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), he had crossed swords with the DMK many times even in the electoral arena. But the MDMK has also been an electoral ally of DMK in some elections as part of larger alliances.

The voracious speaker, who draws crowds for his eloquence in Tamil, however, is taking the DMK head on only now on the Eelam issue. Among the senior political leaders of Tamil Nadu, Vaiko alone has been a consistent supporter of Eelam, having openly spoken in favour of the LTTE and gone to jail for making statements to that effect.

So at a time, when Karunanidhi plans to garner some popular support by raising the Eelam bogey, Vaiko’s open opposition to TESO is likely to upset the DMK patriarch’s master plan.

-Sunday Standard