Tehelka - The People's Paper

Volleyball is Vaiko’s favourite sport. He represented Presidency College, Chennai, in volleyball in the 1960s. More recently, inmates at Vellore Central Prison watched him sweat it out at the volleyball court every evening during his 19-month detention under pota. “I am a setter. I am told I am the best setter even now,” the MDMK leader had said in an interview to Tehelka a few months before he was released on bail in early 2004.

Vaiko now seeks to play the role of a setter in the aiaDMK-led alliance in Tamil Nadu for the upcoming Assembly elections. “Ours is a formidable alliance.

The AIADMK-MDMK alliance will sweep the polls,” he said, after Jayalalithaa allotted him 35 seats, 13 more than what the DMK offered him.

Vaiko says, ‘When I set out on my 1,100 km march from Tirunelveli to Chennai in heavy rain, Sun TV reported that I had postponed my march due to rains’

In fact, the alliance did not come out of the blue. Speculations had been rife for some time in political circles about Vaiko’s imminent exit from the DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA). Leaders of both aiaDMK and MDMK confirmed that they were exploring the possibility of an alliance. However, if public reaction is any indication, Vaiko might have a lot of explaining to do as to why he joined Jayalalithaa, who invoked pota against him.

“How could he do this?” asked a shocked autodriver outside Thayagam, the MDMK’s party office in Chennai, moments after Vaiko clinched the deal with Jayalalithaa. In Trichy, where a DMK state conference was underway, angry cadre pulled down a giant cut-out of Vaiko. To the DMK rank and file, Vaiko is a traitor, who has betrayed their leader yet again. The memory of Vaiko’s exit from the DMK alliance in 2001 just prior to the elections is still fresh in their minds. MDMK contested alone and polled about 13.4 lakh votes.

Vaiko, on the other hand, justifies his decision to quit the DMK alliance. He feels insulted at the way the DMK treated him, both in 2001 and now. “This time also we were treated in the same manner. We had no option but to leave the alliance,” he says. Vaiko accuses Sun TV, the Maran family-owned channel, of blacking him out and spreading canards against him. “Sun TV did not give any coverage to me or my functions. On August 5, 2004, when I set out on my 1,100 km march from Tirunelveli to Chennai in heavy rain, Sun TV reported that I had postponed my march due to rains. A popular serial on the channel also made fun of me. It showed a man, who sets out on a march, but collapses and dies midway,” says Vaiko. He says he had discussed the issue of the Sun TV coverage with Karunanidhi. “He said that they (the Marans) would not listen to his word. He has told reporters that Sun TV was a private channel and that it had the freedom to decide on what it aired.”

But a former MDMK leader, who is no longer with the party, says Vaiko left the DMK-led alliance in 2001 to prevent Karunanidhi’s son, MK Stalin from becoming chief minister. “He felt that Karunanidhi would make his son CM, if DMK came to power. He wanted to prevent that at all cost. So he walked out of the alliance giving an excuse that he was not satisfied with the seats allotted to him,” he says.

In fact, the Vaiko-Stalin rivalry goes back to the days when the former was a member of the DMK. Vaiko held various positions in DMK and was even detained under misa (Maintenance of Internal Security Act) for one year from February 1, 1976. He was Rajya Sabha member for three consecutive terms (1978-96). Vaiko was expelled from the DMK in 1993 on the ltte issue. His clandestine trip to Jaffna in 1989 and his meeting with ltte chief Prabhakaran had created differences between him and Karunanidhi. But MDMK leaders say his expulsion was more to do with Vaiko’s growing popularity in the DMK. “Karunanidhi began to sideline Vaiko because he felt he could be a threat to his son, Stalin. Vaiko was ignored and insulted in party meetings. District secretaries were asked not to invite him to address public meetings,” says a senior MDMK leader.

Vaiko’s campaign strategy for the upcoming polls is awaited. Till recently, he had been speaking against Jayalalithaa. Sun TV is flashing clips of Vaiko’s remarks against her in the wake of his arrest in July 2002.

He had vowed to throw out the ‘fascist regime’ of Jayalalithaa then. It remains to be seen how Vaiko is going to handle the blitzkrieg of clips and footage from Sun TV, which had blacked him out once.