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DMK is tired of waiting

Literature has chapters and verses, history has instances and incidents. That when on a tiff, sweet nothings simply mean nothing, and words are spoken no more -- but written, if at all. That while on a courting trip, then again, words are not spoken, as yet, and written, if at all.

In a way, that should explain the 'love triangle' into which the Bharatiya Janata Party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham and the DMK are currently caught.

The AIADMK feels cheated and double-timed by the BJP, the BJP finds the other irritating and demanding, the best of hopes and party manners they had for each other when courting having been diluted and dissolved in the cares and worries of day-to-day living, nay survival.

Then you have the DMK completing the triangle. The party is waiting in the wings, ready to grab the BJP's hand if only the traditional courting rival, namely the AIADMK would desert it after all the high voltage drama of mutual accusations.

And the BJP too finds it amusing to keep both of them guessing, even if it has not made up its mind to fall into the waiting hands of the DMK if the AIADMK takes its love-hate relationship with the BJP to its logical end.

As if this is not enough, Jayalalitha sends out a missive to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, not wanting to be blamed for the transfer of Enforcement Director M K Bezbaruah, and seeking the latter's reinstatement.

Already, the game is on for them both to blame the other for the failure of their 'marriage of inconvenience'.

Each side seems to be marshalling evidence, blaming the other for the failure of their relationship, that had been hailed as a breakthrough when consumated. Only that neither would want to take the inevitable last step, and would only be happy if the other side does it.

During an earlier tiff, Jayalalitha had publicly charged the BJP with courting the DMK, and scheming with the other to engineer defections from the AIADMK parliamentary group. Now, with the Bezbaruah transfer, she launches a missive missile that not only upsets the BJP, but also catches it on the wrong foot.

Yet, in their war-of-nerves that has reached the mean levels of a war of attrition, the BJP cannot afford to lose face in public. Pat comes Vajpayee's reply to Jayalaliitha, asking her to substantiate her charge that a person earlier close to the Prime Minister's Office had taken money from a newspaper baron, to effect the transfer.

This letter is released to the media, promptly. The excuse is offered is that Jayalalitha too had released her letter to the media before the prime minister could see it.

Now it is Jayalalitha's turn. While adding a minister at the Centre to her chargesheet, she claims she had only mentioned her letter to the prime minister in a media statement. The details, she says, have been leaked by the other side.

The ball is now in the BJP's court. Jayalalitha has left no one in doubt on who the prime minister's former aide is. That needs to be challenged if the party's credibility is to be left intact. She has also mentioned a minister at the Centre. That also needs to be deflected.

Now it is Pramod Mahajan's turn. Senior BJP leader and a former aide of the prime minister that he is, Mahajan writes to Jayalalitha, challenging her to name him, for him to take her to the court for defamation. That does it. Jayalalitha is caught on the wrong foot herself, and there is no way of escaping. She turns to solitude, as usual.

There is also another reason. If the kith and kin of the BJP, starting with a Mamata Banerjee here, and a George Fernandes there, not to mention Pramod Mahajan, who is but from the family, all rally round the BJP, the reverse is the case with the AIADMK. Suddenly, Jayalalitha finds herself friendless.

The Pattali Makkal Katchi, the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazagham and the Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress, that had 'lived on the AIADMK' during election time, and who had swore by Jayalalitha only a week earlier, have other ideas.

They go to the BJP's side, even if related only by `marriage'. Left without friends to plead its cause, and to make the crucial difference between life and death for the Vajpayee government, the AIADMK has little option.

If all this is the lowest among the lows in what had once started off as a political marriage of convenience, it's not to be.

Once when Jayalalitha made her charge on the Bezbaruah transfer, Vajpayee had his principal secretary Brajesh Mishra write to her, seeking evidence.

He could as well have spoken to her, or asked any other party senior to do the same. Jayalalitha could not be beaten in such a game of oneupmanship, either.

She had one P Mahalingam reply to the prime minister's principal secretary. The man was the office manager at the AIADMK headquarters, attending to phone calls and faxing media notes.

For befitting the occasion, he has been elevated as executive secretary, AIADMK headquarters, when a senior politician has otherwise been designated the headquarters secretary of the party in true Dravidian style.

If it is thus truce time on the home front -- and no one knows when the next, if not the final, round will commence - - there is more to the 'outsider angle'.

The DMK is obviously tired of waiting. And those in the know confide there was the thing going between the BJP and the DMK, before electoral fate brought the BJP and the AIADMK together. The DMK's public reluctance to accepting the BJP was one cause, or so it seems.

And the same very thing has been going, when the BJP's tiff with the AIADMK was reaching a point-of-no-return. If earlier the BJP-led government had named the DMK in the Jain Commission action taken report on Rajiv Gandhi assassination, now it suddenly removes the name.

There is reason enough for both. While naming Karunanidhi, the BJP wanted to prove its loyalties to the AIADMK, which demanded it. The BJP also wanted to keep the DMK off the Congress, whose Cupid the Tamil Maanila Congress was. But when relations with the AIADMK soured, the BJP did not want to be caught napping. Nor did it want to be left in the lurch.

There again, yes, you have the missives game. Once the AIADMK says all is well with the BJP, the DMK feels frustrated. The party goes to town with two letters, one from senior DMK leader 'Murasoli' Maran, and the other, a reply from Union Home Minister Lal Kishinchand Advani. And the issue? The very same ATR on which the BJP had sought to reassure the AIADMK.

In his missive, Maran wants Karunanidhi's name struck down from the ATR, for this reason or that.

Advani's reply meekly concedes that, for the very same reason. The real reason is obvious. With the BJP and the DMK at each other's throat, a union, if it comes to that, will be laughable. The DMK also knows when to get its pound of flesh, and the BJP does not even wait for the formality of the proposed Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency of intelligence chiefs to clear Karunanidhi.

Interestingly -- or, ironically, if you view it that way -- the Maran-Advani letters were exchanged when the AIADMK was at its indecisive best.

Only that Maran keeps waiting till the AIADMK's decision -- however temporary it be -- to stay with the BJP, before deciding to go to town with his damaging piece of evidence.

If with this, Maran thinks that he will have the AIADMK out of the way, it's not to be. Like the proverbial nag, the AIADMK will not yield. If it has to walk out, it will choose the when, how and why of it, and not play the BJP game when it suits the latter.

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