For Sun God Prabha - The day that failed!

by Neville de Silva

His sycophantic followers call him Suriya Devan, Tamil for Sun God. Still others see him as a latter-day avatar of Lord Murugan.

By whatever panegyrical title he might be elevated to the pantheon, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the supreme leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was the god that failed that day.

If he was eclipsed from the front pages of the regional newspapers and from the newscasts of the electronic media, it was not for want of trying.

How was Prabhakaran to know that kindred souls armed with AK-47s, grenades and assorted weapons would steal the thunder from his annual speech that particular day to the worldwide Tamil diaspora, which is usually full of venom against the Sri Lankan State and those in the international community who help it, and serves as a rousing call to arms?

With the reinvigorated Sri Lankan armed forces pressing the LTTE on all sides in its diminishing fiefdom in the country's North, Sri Lanka watchers around the world waited eagerly for Prabhakaran's "Maaveerar Naal" address, in which he pays tribute to his fallen heroes and charts the path of future action.

However, less than 24 hours before Prabhakaran's Heroes Day speech aired to parts of the world where diaspora

Tamils live, terrorists claimed to be of Pakistani origin stormed ashore and sowed havoc in Mumbai, India's financial and entertainment capital. The Mumbai massacre, which must have evoked memories in the minds of Prabhakaran and his close associates, grabbed the world's news cycles for four days.

Unfortunately for the Tiger supremo, the terrorists decided to attack Indian targets the night before he was to make a plaintive plea to India to save him and his vision of an independent Tamil state from Sri Lanka's advancing armies, which appear poised to take the LTTE's de facto administrative and political capital, Kilinochchi, having already captured some strategic locations.

If last year, Prabhakaran was beating the drums and saying to President Rajapaksa that if he wants war he will get it, and charging India with abetting the "genocide" of the Tamil people, this year his belligerence turned to a plea for understanding by New Delhi and a call to Colombo for a peaceful settlement.

The appeal to India was understandable. The LTTE, which had relied so much on the international community to pressure Colombo into yet another round of political negotiations each time scuttled by the Tigers, now feels let down, as Prabhakaran so clearly stated.

"Some countries which identified themselves as so-called peace sponsors rushed into activities which impaired our negotiations," he said.

(Source: New Straits Times)