Chandrika-basher Kumar’s voice rarely made a difference to Tamils or LTTE

In his latest diatribe against Kumaratunga on a Tamil Internet site, Kumar accused her of harbouring “hatred” for Tamils. In her post-swearing-in speech last month, Kumaratunga had put out a strong warning to all those who stood for terror or supported it in any way, and had urged the Tamil people of Sri Lanka to stop supporting the LTTE.

Referring to this, Kumar said he wrote “as one whom you have recognised in your speech. And, I write as one who refuses to be deterred by the naked threats that dot your speech”.

A successful criminal lawyer, Kumar was the son of G GPonnambalam, one of Sri Lanka’s leading Tamil politicians at the time of the country’s independence.

Though Kumar’s strong opinions were heard from every available forum and provided much colour, his ambition of following in his father’s footsteps to play a substantive role in Sri Lankan politics remained unrealised.

He led the All Ceylon Tamil Congress but despite his open espousal of the LTTE, he was not taken seriously as a politician even by sections of the Tamil community that supported the LTTE.

On one memorable occasion, after polling very few votes as an independent candidate for parliamentary elections, he berated the Tamil people as a bunch of ingrates.

In the presidential election just gone by, he put himself up as the candidate of the Tamil people but dropped his nomination plans suddenly. It was rumoured then that he did so on instruction from the LTTE, who in their endeavour to ensure that Kumaratunga did not win the election, did not want the votes of the Tamil community to split amongcandidates ranged against her.

It was abundantly clear to observers that neither the LTTE nor the Tamil people thought much of his ambitions to become a “leader”.

At best, Kumar, with his wealth and connections, was viewed by the Tamil community, and perhaps also by the Tigers, as a useful tool through which Velupillai Prabhakaran’s views could be circulated in the Sri Lankan captial.

For instance, after Neelan Tiruchelvam’s assassination at the hands of the LTTE last July, Kumar wrote a lengthy article carried by at least two weekend English newspapers in Colombo that vilified the murdered parliamentarian as a traitor to the Tamil “nation”.

In his recent Internet article, he concluded by saying that his “considered conviction” was that the only solution to the ethnic conflict was for the Sinhalese and Tamils to live “in two definite and distinct compartments each minding their own business unfettered by the other”.

For those opposed to the LTTE, Kumar’s lifestyle in Colombo, his fleet ofMercedes Benz cars, his fortified home in a tony neighbourhood, were all evidence of what many described as his “hypocrisy”.

He was derisively asked several times why, if he supported the LTTE’s separatist cause so much, had he not sent his own children to fight alongside LTTE cadres for Eelam? Why had he sent them abroad to study instead?

But Kumar was unbothered by such arguments. Though he said he supported the LTTE’s “political philosophy”, he never once condemned the group’s terror tactics in pursuit of this philosophy.