Karuna as a politician

Editorial The Island Courtesy The Island 06-02-2007

A spokesman for the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) is reported to have told a group of US Embassy officials at a recent meeting that it intends to contest elections in the future. Prabhakaran’s erstwhile military commander and TMVP leader Karuna, now on a campaign to extricate the Eastern Province from his former boss’s grip, seems to be playing his cards right.

The success of any guerrilla movement depends on its ability to metamorphose into a political force when the time warrants such a change. An organisation which resists that evolutionary process is doomed to perish inside its cocoon of terror. The LTTE has made that mistake. It may claim to have a political wing but it is only too well known that its political arm cannot at least pretend to have some semblance of independence in comparison to movements like Sinn Fein. The LTTE may have sought to achieve its political objectives through the formation of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) but its effort has manifestly failed. For, the TNA lacks the gravitas of a real political force. It is neither here nor there.

The LTTE has castrated the democratic parties and they are mere appendages of the LTTE, save a few courageous leaders like V. Anandasangaree. Tamil politico-military organisations have moved in to fill the vacuum but they, too, have failed to be an effective counter to the LTTE, though their courage to defy terror deserves credit. The advantage that Karuna has over others is that he can cater to a constituency (the East), which has always had an uneasy relationship with the LTTE-dominated North. The TMVP’s policy of reaching out to non-Tamils in the multi ethnic Eastern Province and the image of Karuna as a leader capable of standing up to Prabhakaran have stood the TMVP in good stead.

Prabhakaran is not unaware that he is severely handicapped on the political front. As a result, he has gone all out to eliminate Tamil politicians who, he thinks, will one day pose a challenge to him, so that his leadership will remain unrivalled.

Prabhakran is also not oblivious to the fact that there are many closet separatists who are trying to achieve their goal through political means. They aspire to a separate state sans the LTTE at the helm.

The emergence of the TMVP as a formidable political factor in the Eastern Province is a worrisome proposition not only to the LTTE but also to the closet Eelamists. The TMVP has therefore come under heavy fire from both camps whose interests are threatened by its political project. While the LTTE is hell bent on destroying the Karuna Group militarily, others are on a campaign to ruin whatever image that group may have built over the past few years as an alternative to the LTTE.

Karuna may not find standing up to the LTTE so uphill a task as he, too, is well versed in guerrilla warfare. He knows the terrain and is said to have the backing of the state military whose objective of clearing the East augurs well for his agenda. But, politics he is venturing into is a different ball game altogether. In politics, it is not only bombs and bullets that he has to be mindful of. It is a different kind of warfare where throats are slit not with machetes but with the innocent looking diya redda (‘bathing cloth’)—as wile and guile are popularly referred to. One who takes to politics, it is said, must possess the ability to ‘carry fire under water.’ (Look at the way President Rajapakse tripped Ranil with his saataka the other day after having tea and exchanging pleasantries with him! Ranil has lost 18 MPs to him!)

Unlike the mainstream politicians who have skeletons securely hidden in their cupboards, Karuna has most of them out in the open. He stands accused of using child soldiers. UN Envoy Allan Rock, who has named the Karuna Group in a UN report for abducting children, may be an LTTE sympathiser contracted to fix the outfit, but Karuna will have to put his house in order if he is to prove that he is different from his former boss, who is going places in a litter carried by cubs. Before venturing to contest elections, Karuna will have to release all child combatants he is reported to have within his ranks forthwith and desist from acts of violence against civilians. That is the best way he can help re-democratise the Eastern Province and banish terror from that part of the country.