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Karunanidhi keeps both BJP and Left guessing

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

Breaking the formal silence of the past week, the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu has served notice on the Congress and the Left. The message, delivered by party chief and state Chief Minister M Karunanidhi in Madras on Sunday is very clear: choose between the DMK and the AIADMK.

"We favour Sonia Gandhi for prime minister ... our friendship with the Left continues," Karunanidhi told newsmen who sought his reaction to Prime Minister A B Vajpayee and Home Minister L K Advani seeking the DMK's support for the BJP-led coalition government at the Centre, on phone. "Can we be where the AIADMK is?"

Karunanidhi's message thus to the BJP is as much for the Congress and the Left. "If the Left wants our friendship of the past decades to continue into the future, it has to convince the Congress against aligning with the AIADMK, in an attempt to form an alternative government at the Centre," says a DMK source. "By the same token, if the Congress and the Left chose to side with the AIADMK, we are free to decide on our future course."

The DMK leader is unsure whether taking an anti-AIADMK stand would mean the party's six Lok Sabha members backing the BJP, if it came to that, or would abstain from voting on a confidence voter or the like. "The party's general council will meet in a few days to take the decision," Karunanidhi said, adding that he would be visiting Delhi only if the need really arose. "We have now wrested the political initiative from the AIADMK," the source says adding, "Our backing the Congress will also help keep the TMC ally with us."

With this, Karunanidhi has also conveyed to the BJP that he was not ready to consider his party's backing for the Vajpayee government as long as the AIADMK continued to support it. And by naming Sonia Gandhi for prime ministership, he has also sought to allay doubts of non-Congress, anti-BJP leaders staking claims for the top job. "That included the names of Jayalalitha, Subramanian Swamy, Jyoti Basu, and even G K Moopanar, the leader of the Tamil Maanila Congress and ally of the DMK," says the source.

Karunanidhi's statement assumes significance, what with the AIADMK's 'calibrated withdrawal of support' to the Vajpayee government seemingly taking it nowhere. "Some of our calculations have gone awry, and we do not know at this hour what more the Congress wants us to do, to distance ourselves from the Vajpayee government, even when there has been no reciprocal move by that party," says an AIADMK leader.

The 'studied silence' of the Congress has forced the AIADMK reconsider its options, which it had been keeping open anyway. "One possibility is for the AIADMK to extend issue-based support to the Vajpayee government from outside, in return for a JPC probe into the 'Fernandes-Bhagwat row', and some relief, if not total reprieve, from the 'real issues' concerning the party leadership," says an informed source.

"A JPC would be a face-saving mechanism for the AIADMK to continue to back the Vajpayee government. Thus, the otherwise-unconditional-support on paper would boost the BJP's public image as a tough bargainer on issues," adds the source. "That has also been the pattern of their love-hate relationship of the past year. The real solution lies in the 'real issues', where the Vajpayee government has been rendering relief to Jayalalitha, unconcerned about the public reaction in Tamil Nadu, and unknown mostly to the rest of the nation."

Sources in the Congress say they have been sounded out by 'friends in the AIADMK' to try build contact between Jayalalitha and Sonia Gandhi. The Congress president is known to have discussed the 'Tamil Nadu angle' of the evolving national situation with some leaders from the state in the last couple of days, and is yet to decide on the future course. "In the absence of any direction from the high command, we are unable to establish contact with Jayalalitha," says a source adding, "Why does the AIADMK suddenly need our service when she had looked elsewhere for counsel and contacts, all these past days?"

In this context, the source still refers to Jayalalitha's 'ambiguous' statement on her Delhi visit, beginning Monday. "Jayalalitha says she would be meeting 'important personalities', without mentioning the party hues. Maybe, it's too early to rule out Jayalalitha meeting the prime minister, or an emissary, for a possible patch-up, if she does not get clear signals from the Congress by then," says the source. "After all, the Congress is more than reluctant even to consider her 'real issues', whereas the BJP has actually gone ahead and done 'something' in the past year."

Though Prime Minister Vajpayee has since distanced himself from Dr Murli Manohar Joshi's tele-talk with Jayalalitha on Saturday - just as he had done on Rangarajan Kumaramangalam's anti-AIADMK stance once earlier - BJP sources in Madras confirm that such a talk did take place, and obviously had the leadership's clearance. "Joshi is a Sanghi, who would not have acted on his own. Otherwise, he was acting on behalf of a section of the BJP that puts power before policies," he adds.

As for the rationale behind AIADMK leader Sedapatti R Muthiah going to town on Joshi's tele-talk, which the latter has variously denied since, the source has this much to say : "Clearly, Jayalalitha does not want to push the BJP into the hands of the DMK and the like, and feel confident in their company, without a clear and favourable signal for her, from the Congress. Hence she wanted to put the DMK on the defensive, which objective she has achieved, if you went by Karunanidhi's latest statement."

As he explains, Joshi's tele-talk followed a similar one between Advani and Karunanidhi, at the former's initiative. "The second chat thus implied that the BJP had not been wholly successful in its DMK mission. By going to town on the Joshi mission, the AIADMK has succeeded in forcing the DMK to delay its decision on the BJP, and wresting the political initiative from the BJP. Obviously, this is what forced Vajpayee to talk to Karunanidhi last night, culminating in the latter's 'open-to-BJP' statement."

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