Can centrist SJB hold against JVP surge for political domination?

Can the SJB hold the line?

In an incredibly silly switcheroo, Sajith and the SJB, hijacked or converted by an elitist cosmopolitan caucus, tried to play the UNP of 1977 rather than either of the two roles that were required by a democratic Opposition with a strong Left competitor. These were roles customised for Sajith and the SJB to play: SWRD 1956, Ranasinghe Premadasa 1988 or both. The SJB abjured these roles, abdicating them to their rival Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the JVP-NPP. AKD kicked the goal in

Neither President Dissanayake nor Foreign Minister Herath will attend the BRICS summit in Russia, Oct 22-24. The skimpy reason given was electioneering. https://economynext.com/sri-lanka-president-foreign-minister-to-skip-brics-summit-183475/ 

Putin sent a letter of invitation through his ambassador. AKD has won his election and can surely spare a few days. His appearance at the BRICS summit would reinforce our bid for membership (initiated by Foreign Minister Sabry) while enhancing the JVP-NPP’s electoral profile. Alternatively, PM Amarasuriya could attend the opening, Foreign Minister Herath the closing, splitting-up the few conference days.

Why forfeit this golden opportunity to project the new government to the BRICS, take its place among leaders like Brazil’s Lula, make friends, explore options of diversifying dependence, share views on debt restructuring, balance our external relations, and identify with ‘BRICS Plus’ and its global perspective?    

The Lankan political leadership’s absence from the BRICS summit; the alacrity with which AKD agreed to Ranil’s framework with the ISB holders; the appointment of CITIBANK as intermediary (rather than, say, Prof Martin Guzman, former Finance Minister of Argentina); the Indian media report that the Ranil-Modi road-rail project linking Trincomalee with Tamil Nadu is moving ahead; the ‘crony communist-capitalist’ state appointments -- all point to the core character and trajectory of the AKD administration. 

The new administration wants the West and India on-side while establishing “strong political power” (AKD to his candidates) –i.e., complete control-- on the island. 

It’s the JVP, stupid 

I relate reflexively to the red flag with the hammer-and-sickle. I stood up straighter seeing the flag on screen at the recent reception for the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. 

At the Museum of the Revolution in Beijing, I teared-up in the corner of an eye when I saw the black-and white footage of Mao on horseback. 

As a 15-year-old, I had a lump in my throat when Richard Burton playing Marshal Tito in the movie ‘Sutjeska’ (1973) called out ‘Communists step forward’ for a suicidally dangerous anti-Nazi battle (in 1943) and nobody did, though one man spoke for everyone: “Comrade Tito, we are all Communists here”. 

On President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s delegation on the first official visit by a Sri Lankan head of state to Vietnam (late-2009), MR observed me raising a clenched-fist salute at the glass case enclosing the body of Ho Chi Minh. 

I am proud of being quoted on revolutionary ethics (from my book on Fidel) in a review in Radical Philosophy (UK) of Stephen Soderbergh’s two-part biopic on Che Guevara starring Benecio del Toro. 

All that said, I didn’t like it when the NPP candidates trooped over to the JVP headquarters in Pelawatta with the red flag emblazoned with hammer-and-sickle fluttering outside the building in the stiff, pre-rain breeze. 

This was very different from seeing the same red flag flying over the coalition government of Communist and left parties in Kerala. 

Here was a mask dropped, revealing a political subterfuge and the shape of things to come.   

The NPP is supposedly a socialist national political movement, not a Marxist-Leninist or Communist one. This is doubtless true. What it covered up so far was the real relationship between the NPP and the JVP. 

“…News footage showed National People’s Power (NPP) or Jathika Jana Balavegaya General Secretary Dr Abeykoon and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna  (JVP) Secretary Tilvin Silva seated in front of a large flag emblazoned by a hammer and sickle watching would-be candidates signing nomination papers.” (https://www.sundaytimes.lk/241013/columns/jvpnpp-target-house-next-aim-for-at-least-a-simple-if-not-large-majority-574242.html) 

NPP candidates went to the JVP headquarters to sign their nominations. NPP General Secretary Dr Nihal Abeysinghe, who is also a senior member of JVP leadership, scrutinised the paperwork. He then handed the paperwork over to the man at whose left hand he sat, the ultimate authority for perusal and final approval. That was Tilvin Silva, General Secretary of the JVP, and executive committee member of the NPP (JJB). At the end of the process, when the media posed questions, it was comrade Tilvin, not NPP Gen Secretary Dr Abeysinghe answering on the steps of the JVP office.      

The NPP is revealed as a ‘front organisation’ of left-liberal ‘fellow travellers’ of the JVP. The JVP is in control of the NPP. The JVP’s hierarchy is in control of the JVP, therefore the NPP.

A vote for the NPP is a vote for the JVP. A two-thirds majority for the NPP would be a two-thirds majority for the JVP. The JVP would become the decider, controlling the country, the state, and ultimately, society. 

If the JVP-NPP wins a simple majority, it would be a beneficial experiment and experience which will help society reform and the JVP evolve. 

In contradistinction, a two-thirds or anything that could bring it within reach poses an unacceptable risk to pluralist democracy. 

Therefore, it is strategically imperative to contain and constrain the JVP. 

What we have is a generational revolution. We also have an ideological revolution. For the first time, we have a leader who doesn’t only have a left background and orientation --as did Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga-- but is the leader of an avowedly Marxist-Leninist party, the JVP. What we do NOT have is the country’s first non-elite leader

AKD isn’t first non-elite leader

At the beginning of this election year, I called attention to the fact that we have a chance to make a generational transition in the island’s political leadership; to shift the generational tectonic plates. That was because we had a choice to two candidates in their mid-50s and one in his mid-70s. I argued we should delete the one in his mid-70s and pick one of the two in their 50s. 

What we have is a generational revolution. 

We also have an ideological revolution. For the first time, we have a leader who doesn’t only have a left background and orientation --as did Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga-- but is the leader of an avowedly Marxist-Leninist party, the JVP. 

What we do NOT have is the country’s first non-elite leader. 

I was browsing the compact anthology of my father’s published writings, ‘Crisis Commentaries’ (ICES Colombo, Introduction by Radhika Coomaraswamy) when I came upon pieces with captions such as:

Dominance of Elite Ends (pp.123-127)

Outsider Takes on Elite (pp.128-131)

The reference was to the victory of Ranasinghe Premadasa. Anura Dissanayake broke through a class barrier which had already been broken once but had been restored. However, AKD comes from the so-called ‘upper caste’. By contrast, Ranasinghe Premadasa broke through the strongest of barriers in South Asian society and politics: class and caste, or as sociologists call it, ‘class-caste’. 

Mervyn de Silva summed it up 35 years ago.

‘The crowning achievement of Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa’s 30-year political career has been a major sociological breakthrough for the Sri Lankan system.

Even before Independence in 1948, the island’s political establishment was totally dominated by an exclusive caste-and-class ‘set’…Mr. Premadasa has now broken that monopoly. He is a genuine commoner.

…Mr. Premadasa, who had come up from very humble beginnings to become the candidate of the rich man’s UNP, presented himself as “the common man”. He understood, he said, the needs and hopes of the poor and the underprivileged. He did not steal the clothes of the 1956 ‘revolution’. He was already wearing them from childhood.

…Mr. Premadasa, the small man’s president, symbolizes the partial and temporary success of 1956.’ 

(Mervyn de Silva, ‘Dominance of Elite Ends’, the Deccan Herald, India, Dec 29th 1988)

Mervyn went on to explain: 

‘President Premadasa is the first elected leader from outside the ranks of the Goigama (farmer) caste... Like Tamils, Muslims and Christians, representative personalities from the so-called ‘lower castes’ have always been accommodated by the main political parties. But never has a non-Goigama member from the ‘lower castes’ become leader of a major party, let alone Prime Minister or President. 

In this semi-feudal society where traditional stratification tends to associate institutionalized oppression with caste, which is unalterable, rather than class, Mr. Premadasa’s election as presidential candidate of the conservative UNP was a sociological breakthrough. 

…Having used him, the upper-class and westernized elite are now determined to recover their lost hegemony by dumping him, he protests…Mr. Premadasa spends four-five days a week addressing island-wide rallies to charge the English-educated upper class, including the Bandaranaike led Opposition, of a “conspiracy” against “the man of the people”, the “outsider”, the “upstart” …’ 

(‘“Outsider” Takes on Elite’, Mervyn de Silva, Times of India, 1989)

Many commentators, academics, intellectuals and civil society figures who support Anura Kumara Dissanayake today as a ‘non-elite’ breakthrough, vilified Premadasa as President and even PM. Alone among the Marxist intelligentsia, Susil Sirivardhana, Simon Navagattegama and I supported him (in my case, barely surviving a lynch-mob at Kanatte, August 1992).

 SJB: Crisis and challenge

Can the Opposition curtail, contain and countervail the JVP? 

Whatever claims that Sajith and the SJB make for themselves as an economic team, they have proved themselves vastly inferior to the JVP and its extension/auxiliary the NPP as a political team. The SJB thought an election is an Economics exam, and flunked the Politics paper, leaving AKD-NPP managing the economy. 

For the first time in our post-Independence history a mainstream democratic party has been proved politically inferior to the Marxist Left in general and the JVP in particular, and that puts the entire democratic system in jeopardy.  

The most incisive political analysis in the Sinhala-language media of Anura’s historic victory and Sajith’s avoidable defeat was entitled “Anura Did a Ranasinghe Premadasa While Sajith Had Been Dressed-Up to Play JR”. Remarkably, it was a signed political commentary in the Mawrata, a newspaper sympathetic to Sajith and the SJB, by veteran political columnist Upul Joseph Fernando (formerly of the Lankadeepa Editorial Desk).

It pointed out acerbically that in a post-Aragalaya Sri Lanka with a tsunami of public sentiment against the old bipartisan elitist Establishment which had plunged the country into crisis, Anura Dissanayake stepped forward to play the anti-elite ‘Outsider’ role of Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1988, while Premadasa’s son Sajith who could have easily done so was manipulated by the SJB’s elite into playing an ‘Insider’, auditioning for JR Jayewardene in 1977,  mounting a candidacy which claimed that the SJB could partner the IMF better, instead of fulfilling Ranasinghe Premadasa’s promise of a New Deal-- a more just, fairer society. The Mawrata also named the elitist SJB ideological and policy ‘twins’ who tripped Sajith up.  

What gives Upul Joseph’s presidential election post-mortem credibility is the fact that after the August 2020 General Election the Mawrata had showcased the fledgling SJB’s achievement and sketched an accurate roadmap and path to victory for Sajith and his party in 2024.  

Mawrata which has two respected senior journalists running it, Upul Joseph Fernando and Thushara Gunaratna, asserted after August 2020 that Sajith’s SJB was in exactly the same situation as SWRD Bandaranaike’s SLFP, which had been founded in 1951 and faced its first election in 1952. They pointed out that the SJB had bettered the SLFP’s performance. While the SLFP had secured 15% on its first outing, the SJB had 23%. It also had 53 seats which was a larger chunk than the SLFP had. Both SWRD Bandaranaike and Sajith Premadasa had assumed the post of Opposition Leader after their first General Election. 

In August 2020, the JVP running as its new avatar the NPP had just 3 seats. AKD had scored 3% in November 2019 while Sajith had clocked 42%. 

At the very next General Election the new party, the SLFP faced, SWRD Bandaranaike was elected Prime Minister and formed the government. The new centrist-progressive formation had spearheaded a Silent Revolution, cannily overtaking the powerful Left which had led the Hartal 1953 uprising. The road was clear for Sajith and the SJB to win the Presidency and Parliament in 2024, said the Mawrata. 

In an incredibly silly switcheroo, Sajith and the SJB, hijacked or converted by an elitist cosmopolitan caucus, tried to play the UNP of 1977 rather than either of the two roles that were required by a democratic Opposition with a strong Left competitor. These were roles customised for Sajith and the SJB to play: SWRD 1956, Ranasinghe Premadasa 1988 or both. The SJB abjured these roles, abdicating them to their rival Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the JVP-NPP. AKD kicked the goal in. 

The SJB’s rightwing ideologues were/are politically ignorant. None had worked with a UNP leader who won the presidency. No one in the SJB except for Imtiaz Bakeer Markar, knew the metamorphosis the UNP had consciously undertaken in Opposition in 1973-1977, which enabled the 1977 victory. 

Writing in the Lanka Guardian magazine in 1980, Minister Lalith Athulathmudali (no fan of then Prime Minister R. Premadasa), disclosed the party’s drastic transformation while in the Opposition and the decisive role of Premadasa in that process. 

“… It [the UNP] had to change its image in theory and in practice. It had to stand on the side of the underprivileged; it had to provide answers to their problems. The one-rupee membership campaign not only changed the money sources of the party but it also helped to democratize its internal politics. 

A new policy and programme proposed by a Committee headed by R. Premadasa was adopted. 

Family power and privileged group power were dethroned and the fact that these very monstrosities were being strengthened in the other parties only served to consolidate the UNP. 

In the popular mind the UNP often thought of as being concerned with the few, came to be considered as the party of the masses. The UNP had built itself a new political base”. 

(Lalith Athulathmudali, Lanka Guardian, Vol. 2 No 17, 1980 p13-14).

This was diametrically opposite to the social and ideological direction pushed by the SJB’s rightwing from 2020 to date. 

When Sajith and Harsha de Silva visited Ronnie de Mel the architect of JR’s Open Economy on his 91st birthday, he advised them (on camera), to “revive the Open Economy, infusing it with a strong dose of socialist values”. Harsha-Eran-Kabir ignored Ronnie’s advice just as they had ignored Nobel Prize winner Joe Stiglitz’ advice tendered to Ranil in Colombo in 2015, and preferred notorious neoliberal Ricardo Hausmann instead. 

Sajith’s ‘Social Democracy’ was drowned out by Harsha’s ‘Social Market Economy’ borrowed from Ranil, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the rightwing International Democratic Union.

Parties more renowned than the SJB have been sunk by surrender on the part of leaders more experienced than Sajith, to rightwing ideological caucuses. Senator John McCain’s presidential run (2008) was dead in the water when he capitulated to the insistence of the US Republican party’s Tea Party Movement i.e., the Christian fundamentalist Evangelical Right, to accept Sarah Palin as Vice-Presidential candidate. 

That was politico-electoral suicide at time when the American public reeling from the Great Recession (2008) and Hurricane Katrina (2005), sought progressive change (which Obama represented). Similarly, Sajith and the SJB’s debacle, 2022-2024. 

If Harsha de Silva leads the SJB, it won’t win any rural areas beating the JVP-NPP. With Sajith, the SJB did (e.g., Medawachchiya, Harispattuwa). If SP course-corrects, he could counterbalance the JVP. 

Can the Opposition curtail, contain and countervail the JVP? Whatever claims that Sajith and the SJB make for themselves as an economic team, they have proved themselves vastly inferior to the JVP and its extension/auxiliary the NPP as a political team. The SJB thought an election is an Economics exam, and flunked the Politics paper, leaving AKD-NPP managing the economy. For the first time in our post-Independence history a mainstream democratic party has been proved politically inferior to the Marxist Left in general and the JVP in particular, and that puts the entire democratic system in jeopardy

Election eve: 35th anniversary

November 13th 2024 marks the 35th anniversary of the defeat of the JVP’s second insurrection and its leader’s demise. 

Will the JVP crown its commemoration with a 2/3rds win? 

Or can Sajith finally channel the electoral spirit of his father who saved pluralist democracy 35 years ago, and contain and countervail the JVP Leviathan?