by Sachi Sri Kantha; published April 6, 2004
Sour Grapes Sangaree: The Psyche of a Lone, Fence-sitting Fox
First to a brief news item which appeared on the first day of March.
“Mar 01, Colombo: Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) leader V. Anandasangaree has rejected the TNA’s claim that the LTTE is the sole representative of Tamil-speaking people. Mr. Anandasangaree said he wants to fight for the rights of his community without intimidation.
He also said he would be elected by the Northern people who reject anti-progressive elements. Mr. Anandasangaree is contesting as an independent candidate for the Jaffna district in the forthcoming election. In the TNA’s manifesto, they claimed the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil community.”[source: Colombo Page news blog, March 1, 2004]
Well, the election results had been officially released and the dream of Anandasangaree, the status-emasculated President of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), had burst like a balloon.
Before the recently concluded election, to P.K.Balachandran –the partisan reporter of Hindustan Times – Anandasangaree complained as follows:
“The LTTE is planning to rig the elections through massive impersonation. Its agents are going to cast the votes of the displaced as well as the dead. It is collecting the voting cards issued in the name of displaced and dead persons for the purpose of impersonation. And this is a huge number because 50% of the 600,000 odd people of the Jaffna peninsula are either displaced or dead,” Anandasangaree said. [Hindustan Times, March 25, 2004]
Well the official results has been released, and according to the official website of Sri Lankan Department of Elections, the total registered number of voters for the Jaffna district was 644,279. Those who actually cast their ballots was 305,259 [i.e, 47.38 percent]. Of these 305,259 votes, Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi [the Federal Party] which was sponsored by the LTTE received 284,026 votes; i.e., a whopping 93.04 percent of the votes polled. Anandasangaree-sponsored Independent Party 1-Jaffna District, received severe drubbing and was able to collect 5,156 votes [i.e., 1.82 percent of the votes polled. If there had occurred mass scale impersonation, as squealed by sour grapes Sangaree (before and after the elections), how come the percentage of total votes polled was only 47.38 percent, which was well below the national average for the 2004 election.
When I was a juvenile, I was punished more than once by my mother with an admonition, ‘Poi sonnaalum poruntha sollu’ [Even if you fib, you should tell a believable fib.]. It appears that a fence-sitting politician like Anandasangaree had forgotten the lessons taught by his good mother. If LTTE really rigged the election “through massive impersonation” in the words of Anandasangaree, how come the polling percentage in the Jaffna district didn’t even reach 50 percent? Does the sour grapes Sangaree want us to believe that the computer of the Commissioner of the General Election also rigged the election against the sour grape Sangaree?
Let me convey my condolences to Sangaree, the fence-sitting fox. He has been hurting badly and lamenting. But his lament has an ages-old ring to it. It is known to everyone as the fox tune of ‘sour grapes’, originally arranged by Aesop – the master story teller
The specific ‘LTTE sour grapes’ tune is also not original to Sangaree. Politicians of every ideology and ethnic group in Sri Lanka and India do play this tune frequently to gain some attention on themselves. Otherwise, they are not worth their salt as politicians. One year ago, in an interview to the Sunday Times (Colombo) reporter Shelani Perera, ‘Sour Grapes’ Sangaree blurted the real reason for his indulging performance:
“See what is happening now. Earlier, foreign dignitaries and others held talks with the TULF or the TNA regarding problems of the Tamils. Now those dignitaries are bypassing us and going straight to Kilinochchi for talks with LTTE leaders.” [Sunday Times, March 30, 2003]
This has remained the main peeve of ‘Sour Grapes’ Sangaree for the past year and which in turn exposed his bloated ego. In the recently concluded general election, Sangaree has been ignored by the Tamil voters lock stock and barrel, while holding the emasculated position as ‘the TULF President’. The ‘throne’ he carried in his head as the ‘TULF President’ has been exposed as utterly worthless, for the past year or so. Sangaree’s predecessors who carried the same throne (S.J.V.Chelvanayakam, G.G.Ponnambalam, S.Thondaman and M.Sivasithamparam) until 2002, either willingly or reluctantly and also either for short-term or long-term, had gravitas based on their deeds despite their occasional foibles. Thus, they always had a listening constituency. But poor Sangaree lacked any gravitas and thus his listening constituency is abysmal. Because of the downgrading of his status as the TULF President due to lack of gravitas, Sangaree starved for the latest cocktail chit-chat on the peace negotiation between the UNP government and the LTTE. He was sulking that the LTTE’s political head S.P.Thamil Chelvan is representing Eelam Tamils in the discussions with the visiting foreign dignitaries. And this hurt ‘Sour Grapes’ Sangaree’s image badly, since he could not service his Indian contacts accordingly to receive his regular ‘15 minutes of respect’ in the corridors leading to the offices of Ms. Jayalalitha, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the Hindu newsmedia.
Why the ‘Sour Grapes’ Sangaree lacks gravitas among the Eelam Tamils is easy to explain. In his political life spanning for 44 years, Sangaree – now a senior citizen passed 70 years – has never been a strong ‘party man’, though he received recognition as the political Mascot of Kilinochchi. His forte had been as a fence-sitter and lone wolf. Kilinochchi constituency was demarcated in 1960. Sangaree first contested the March 1960, July 1960 and 1965 general elections on the Trotskyist LSSP party label and failed to get elected. In the 1960 elections, he lost badly to the Federal Party nominee A.Shivasundaram. Then, in the 1965 election, Sangaree was again trounced by Pundit K.P.Ratnam of Federal Party. Realizing that his political fortunes would be better if he hitched his flag to a Tamil party, he abandoned the Trotskyist LSSP and joined the Tamil Congress (TC) to contest the 1970 general election. For the first time, he was elected as the MP for Kilinochchi, winning marginally by 600-odd votes against the Federal Party nominee M.Alalasundaram. Then in 1971, with two of his other two TC fellow first-timers [C.Arulampalam and A.Thiyagarajah], Sangaree temporarily flaunted his ‘SLFP-LSSP-CP collaborationist’ label. But, after sensing that the popular wind was blowing towards Tamil nationalism, Sangaree jumped into the TULF bandwagon for self protection. In the 1977 elections, he trounced the then SLFP’s sin-eating minister C.Kumarasooriyar, the predecessor of Lakshman Kadirgamar, convincingly under the TULF label.
While many of his TULF pals in the North and the East had their ‘defining moments’ in satyagraha protests, incarceration, Trial-at Bar cases in the Tamil freedom campaign of 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Sangaree – due to his fence-sitting strategy – is notably devoid of such a ‘defining moment’ in his political career. Thus, he kept pouting empty phrases like “I have a moral duty to keep the TULF flag flying high. If I fail in this duty, I would be failing those who worked so hard and even died for the party.” [Sunday Times, March 30, 2003] In this answer, Sangaree muffled the fact that four of his TULF pals (V.Dharmalingam and M.Alalasundaram in 1985; A.Amirthalingam and V.Yogeswaran in 1989) and over 6,000 Eelam Tamil civilians lost their lives due to the viles and machinations of the Intelligence arm of India.
To a question, ‘What are the reasons for your sudden change of position?’ Sangaree characteristically answered, “That is the stand I have been taking all along. There is no sudden change. I have always held this position.” Call it a Freudian slip. But it buttressed the fact that Sangaree was nothing but a ‘lone, fence-sitting fox’. Note the use of first person singular in his answer. The message in this grating squeal of this fence-sitting fox is nothing but, ‘To hell with the consensus of Eelam Tamils on LTTE. I have to dance with India’s policy Poo Bahs.’ For this kind of opportunism, Eelam Tamils in Jaffna figuratively ‘skinned’ the fox in the recently concluded election. But still, he is indulging in his squealing.
If ‘Sour Grapes’ Sangaree indeed possesses a sense of moral duty – evidence for which is hardly forthcoming, as of now – he can demonstrate it by standing on his own legs rather than playing the puppet role of India’s policy Poo Bahs, and pouting inanities. But, it is too big a job Eelam Tamils can expect from ‘Sour Grapes’ Sangaree – since a fence-sitting fox knows only to squeal and cannot roar like a Tiger.