The Tamil National Alliance’s (TNA) E Saravanapavan had full-page advertisements in newspapers superimposing his photograph over a map of Tamil Eelam this week, as politicians paraded their Tamil nationalist links with campaigning for general elections drawing to a close.
The campaign poster on Sudar Oli, owned by Saravanapavan himself, contained a few lines of lyrical prose exhorting the Tamil people to choose the TNA so that their “dream of attaining the dawn could be fulfilled”.
Another poster in the Uthayan, another paper owned by Saravanapavan, invokes the “fallen LTTE fighters’ dreams”. The paper also published a full-page piece on how “national leader” Velupillai Prabhakaran had affection for the paper, even quoting his comments on the paper.
As the election draws closer, the TNA has attracted much opprobrium for its inability to champion the Tamil cause effectively over the past 10 years. The Tamil Civil Society Forum released a scathing statement last week evaluating TNA’s abysmal performance in delivering rights and justice for the Tamil people who were worst affected by war.
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