Gingee exit: A double blow for MDMK

Its cup of miseries is almost full now, what with its failure to whip up support against Vaiko’s detention under POTA. Interestingly though, Gingee does not seem to have anyone in the party to sympathise with his lot.

A senior functionary remarked with barely concealed glee: ‘‘Of course, it is bad for the party that someone should go in such circumstances. We don’t even know whether he is a victim of some conspiracy. But then, the fact remains that he has distanced himself from Vaiko as also from the grassroots, keener to feather his own nest than to build the party. And one should not forget that he did not care to protest when the Centre came up with such an atrocious affidavit against our leader.’’

It is indeed ironical that Gingee, who was a formidable personality in the DMK and who could cock a snook at Karunanidhi himself, should now go out unsung.

A law graduate from Villupuram district and a Vanniar, Gingee was for 15 long years the district secretary of the DMK. Evidently daunted by his popularity among the cadre in the region, Karunanidhi had sought to checkmate him at almost every stage and sought to groom Ponmudi as a rival leader. And it was Ponmudi who was made a minister in 1989, in preference to Gingee’s claims.

Predictably, when Vaiko walked out in 1993, protesting Karunanidhi’s succession plans, Gingee was one of the first senior leaders to follow suit.

He first became a Union minister in 1999 when he got the Textiles portfolio. A year later, he bagged the Finance Ministry, though only as minister of state.

Even before the current scam, Gingee’s name had figured in some unsavoury deals. Besides the MDMK cadre, perhaps Vaiko himself had become disenchanted with him since Gingee failed to come out aggressively when he was detained.

Some see a conspiracy in the Perumalsamy episode to malign the MDMK and ease it out from the NDA.