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Jaya in another bid for Oppn unity

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

Help me help you, was the message AIADMK supremo Jayalalitha had for leaders of secular Opposition parties, and they were only ready to oblige. With that may have been sown fresh seeds of Opposition unity at the national-level, this time through a dinner hosted by Jayalalitha at her Poes Garden residence on Saturday night, as against the famous tea party in New Delhi last time round.

Attending the dinner and a public meeting preceding it, were former prime minister H D Deve Gowda of the secular Janata Dal, Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet and his Communist Party of India counterpart A B Bardhan, apart from Congress general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad.

The focus, of course, was Tamil Maanila Congress founder G K Moopanar, who shared the dais with Jayalalitha after their controversial appearance together a few weeks back, and who visited her residence for the first time.

The occasion was the birth anniversary celebrations of Dravidar Kazhagam founder, Periyar EV Ramaswami Naicker. Though the occasion was on September 17, the organising committee of Opposition parties, chaired by Moopanar, and sponsored by Dravidiar Kazhagam general secretary K Veeramani, decided to celebrate it a week or so later.

Rounding off the public show of strength, Jayalalitha assured the secular party leaders of her commitment to unseat communal forces in New Delhi. "I take a solemn pledge to throw out communal forces and install a secular government at the Centre," she vowed, to the applause of AIADMK cadres from northern districts that formed most of the evening's gathering.

"The day is not far off when secular parties will again be ruling the country," she declared, pledging to continue the struggle.

The cause for secular parties to get together may have been provided by threats of dismissal of the CPI-M-led Left Front Government in West Bengal. Jayalalitha referred to the issue, drawing a parallel to the situation in Tamil Nadu. "Why is the Centre not taking any notice of the law and order situation in the state, where an intra-party problem has led to violence on the streets, and the torching of transport buses?" she asked, referring to the ruling DMK sidelining M K Azhagiri, son of Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.

Jayalalitha also referred to the Veerappan issue, where she criticised the Karunanidhi Government, a line taken earlier by Surjeet and Bardhan. West Bengal's beleaguered Chief Minister Jyoti Basu was the first leader outside Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to have criticised the approach of the two state governments on the Dr Rajakumar kidnap episode.

Indications are that the AIADMK may have been behind it. That Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, an ally of the DMK in the Bharatiya Janata Party-National Democratic Alliance, should have taken a similar line later showed how deep the issue ran.

If Surjeet attacked the BJP-led Centre on the West Bengal issue, Azad tackled the DMK's criticism of Jayalalitha being the focus of the Periyar celebrations.

"Do not throw stones from inside glass houses," Azad told Karunanidhi, obviously referring to the DMK's alliance with a 'communal' BJP.

Bardhan was even more forthcoming on the AIADMK's side, describing the state government's corruption cases against Jayalalitha as a 'witch-hunt'.

What was originally conceived as a platform to bring Jayalalitha and a wavering Moopanar on the same side, gained a larger national perspective, with Jayalalitha as focus. So much so, even the much talked-about AIADMK-TMC patch-up got woven into a larger canvas that Jayalalitha painted on, with herself at the centre.

TMC sources concede that once again the party has been charmed into overlooking possible gains of the function for Jayalalitha and the AIADMK, compared to other secular parties in the state. This when Moopanar was chairman of the organising committee for Saturday's public meeting, and the TMC has not formally joined the AIADMK-led electoral alliance in the state.

"By making their issue hers and raising communalism and central intervention in West Bengal, the core of her speech, Jayalalitha has got the communists and Congress on her side," said an AIADMK leader.

"Now, the TMC either join hands with us, or may be forced to lead a weak and forgotten Third Front in the assembly elections, what with the DMK having closed its doors, and is in no mood to part company with the BJP, a demand by the TMC."

As a follow-up, the AIADMK executive will meet on October 10, to finalise the election strategy. This will imply a response from the TMC, and other parties still intend on considering a Third Front. "We want to end this confusion here and now, without letting the TMC carry on with the Third Front option till the elections."

With some sensitive court cases against Jayalalitha reaching a decisive stage in the next few months, the AIADMK would like to know who are its friends, and who are its competitors -- inside and outside the NDA. The AIADMK hopes to nip in the bud TMC hopes of leading the Opposition alliance in the state, if court verdicts lead to Jayalalitha being debarred from contesting elections.

A state Congress leader admitted that party president Sonia Gandhi should have accepted the invitation for the meeting. Instead, she sent Azad, the AICC general secretary in charge of Tamil Nadu affairs.

Said the Congress leader: "Either Sonia's advisors did not foresee the import of the conclave, or were still feeling the pinch of last year's misadventure in Jayalalitha's company."

It was a Jaya show all the way. From cut-outs at the venue, to controversies surrounding the convention, Jayalalitha was all over. Periyar was not only dwarfed, but was forgotten.

Worse for the Congress, if not Periyar, the AIADMK got huge cut-outs of TNCC president EVKS Elangovan, a grand-nephew of the Dravidian ideologue, removed from the meeting venue, only to put up larger cut-outs of Jayalalitha in greater numbers.

Jayalalitha's strategy seems clear: she would rather have national parties on her side, converting next year's assembly polls in Tamil Nadu into an electoral battle involving issues and policies, not egos and personalities. With that she would also have them legitimising her leadership and cause, tempting them, in return, with the resourcefulness of her chief ministership, which could keep the national Opposition in good stead for taking on the BJP-NDA at the national-level, subsequently.

It was also the kind of temptation the BJP could not resist when she offered a platform in Tamil Nadu, after the Ayodhya demolition, when the party was persona non grata for state governments, and followed it up much later with an alliance in the 1998 Lok Sabha polls.

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