PMK's Madras rally sends a warning to DMK

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

"We came because Doctorayya asked us to come," the tone and tenor of the group from a village near Tindivanam town in the Vanniar heartland was as casual as it was factual. "And he is supporting the LTTE," butted in a youth in the crowd, as if to clarify why they were at Madras.

By any standard, the rally on Madras's Marina beach last weekend -- it went up to the early hours of Sunday morning -- was huge. The traffic in the state capital was choked, as is the case whenever one political party or the other organises a show-of-strength.

Dr S Ramadoss, the medical doctor-turned-politician and founder of the Pattali Makkal Katchi, is back in the news. If originally, his community-based Vanniar Sangam stormed into the national limelight by its tree-felling road blockades to demand job reservations for the backward community, Dr Ramadoss swung to the other extreme last year by planting saplings wherever he went, as if to prove a point. He has also been wearing a pan-Tamil badge boldly and last weekend's rally was only one in a series.

"He thinks he is broad-basing the PMK vote-bank by taking up the pan-Tamil cause," grumbles a former sympathiser. "Ramadoss's political causes will alienate the electorate across a broad spectrum. He is fighting for political non-issues, and is living in the past."

Last weekend's rally focused exclusively on the 'protection of the Eelam Tamils'. Though Dr Ramadoss and other participants at the meeting, including Samata Party leader George Fernandes -- he was the only national leader to accept the PMK's invitation -- bent backwards to argue that the meeting concerned all the suffering Tamils in Sri Lanka's North-East provinces, the common perception was that it was pro-LTTE in nature.

"That's a difficult image for Ramadoss to erase from the public mind, after the pro-LTTE sloganeering at a similar rally organised by the party in the months following the Rajiv Gandhi assassination," says a former PMK leader. If last week's rally attracted any advance attention it was only over the demand for its ban from the likes of Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy.

Fiery speeches were made at the meeting, but every speaker ensured that he was on the right side of the law. DMK Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, haunted by his party's pro-LTTE past, had warned Dr Ramadoss that the law would intervene if any anti-national speeches were made.

"There is no denying that it was a spectacular show, particularly when no elections are round the corner," concedes the former PMK leader. "If anything, the PMK cadres, like those of the non-DMK, non-TMC parties, are demoralised after the successive losses suffered in the general elections and the local bodies polls last year. The Madras show demonstrates that Ramadoss still counts in the politics of Tamil Nadu's northern districts, where the DMK too has its stronghold. It was thus more than a message for the DMK."

Where the PMK founder seems to have faltered is in his choice of agenda."What he needs is not international media attention or national focus. He has to necessarily broadbase his electoral options within the state, starting with the Vanniar stronghold, where the DMK has a better organisational machinery, and the early-bird advantage from the fifties," says one political observer.

"Instead of focusing on the Sri Lankan issue when he could not speak his mind because of the government-imposed restrictions, Dr Ramadoss should have focused on issues closer to the people," adds this observer.

Inflation, the soaring prices of essential commodities, in his opinion, could have made a better issue for Dr Ramadoss to highlight than the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils. "With such a crowd at his behest," the observer says, "Ramadoss could have sown the seeds for political wonders in the future. Instead, he narrowed down his options and chose the one where the state's population is on the opposite side. He could have re-written the PMK's history but he lost one more opportunity."