Today the ex- LTTE Commander of the East is chickening out of the election race and insists he should be nominated from the national list. Not stopping at that the Kiran born had prevented his sister also from applying for nominations from Batticaloa as a mark of protest against the UPFA refusal to book him a national list slot.

In short the SLFP joint Vice President is attempting to call the shots for the SLFP leadership.

It is very unlikely that anybody will entertain his demands right now and what one hears is that he had got a dressing down from the SLFP hierarchy for this stubbornness.

Karuna, for the government, is a spent force. The dispute over nominations heralds the beginning of the end of perks and privileges he enjoyed under the Rajapaksa regime despite his betrayal of it with the London police.

And it is nobody but Karuna who should be blamed for his fate today.

While the much less exposed and informed Pillayan remained loyal to his Eastern roots Karuna forgot his community the moment he got used to urban life and got carried away with an extravagant lifestyle thereby digging his own grave. Had he remained loyal to his people and got involved in the development work in the area, the need to runaway from polls would not have arisen. Instead he went ahead with his excesses, including promiscuous ways, while the people in the East were working hard to put together the pieces of life after war.

With his callousness to the stock of his community Karuna proved in many ways that he does not deserve the mandate of the Tamil people whose rights he championed while he was with the LTTE.

Today he stands as the most loathed character among Eastern Tamils and most probably he too knows about this fact.

Within the government ranks the post-war value of Karuna Amman has started hitting the rock bottom since he hardly has a role to play in a post-LTTE era. Plus the lifestyle of Karuna especially his escapades at nightclubs had brought enough humiliation to the government. The government is also alive to the fact that there are difficulties in wooing the Eastern Tamil vote as long as it harbours Karuna.

It is most likely that the move to offer him nominations from the Batticaloa list came with the agenda of providing the former LTTE commander an honourable exit in politics. It is after all too obvious that there’s no way of Karuna mustering enough votes among the Batticaloa people to win a seat in parliament.

He saw through the design and dodged it.

However if the UPFA is adamant in showing him the door the orders will come the sooner or later.

Courtesy: Daily Mirror