Sri
Lankas Constitutional Coup Thrusts JVP To Political Prominence
By Nanda Wickramasinghe
and K. Ratnayake
World
Socialist Web
12 February 2004
Less
than a week after Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga dissolved
parliament and called fresh elections it is already apparent that the
real winner in the political crisis is not the presidents own
partythe Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP)but rather the Janatha
Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a party based on populist demagogy and rabid
appeals to Sinhala chauvinism.
For months, JVP
leaders have been demanding that Kumaratunga use her executive powers
to sack the UNF government, accusing it of betraying the country in
peace talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and kowtowing
to foreign financial interests. Every step the president has taken in
acceding to their demands has emboldened the JVP leadership and set
in motion forces that have become increasingly beyond her control.
The JVP was the
first to hail Kumaratungas decision on November 4 to seize three
key ministries from the government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
and prorogue parliament for two weeks, insisting, nevertheless, that
she had to go further. The party continued to call for an alliance with
the SLFP but only on terms that were highly favourable to itself. One
of the JVPs key demands was for early general elections.
Well aware that
powerful sections of big business and the major powers were pushing
for a compromise with the government to enable peace talks to resume,
Kumaratunga prevaricated. Her own party was deeply divided with significant
sections hostile to any alliance with the JVP and urging a deal with
Wickremesinghe. The SLFPs previous partners in the Peoples Alliancethe
Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and the Communist Partywere also
opposed. Other layers argued that an alliance with the JVP was the only
means for bolstering the SLFPs flagging fortunes.
The new allianceknown
as the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA)was formed on January
20. Immediately, the JVP leadership stepped up its agitation for a general
election. At the first rally held by the alliance in Colombo on January
29, the SLFP leaders vaguely spoke of a future election. JVP leaders
Somawansa Amarasinghe and Wimal Weerawansa, however, insisted that there
would be a general election soon.
The bitter wrangling
within the SLFP leadership was settled at a central committee meeting
on February 1 followed by a meeting of SLFP organisers on February 5.
Amid growing rumours that Kumaratunga was about to dismiss the government,
the alliance was formally registered as a political party on February
6. The following day, at midnight, Kumaratunga formally dissolved parliament
without informing Wickremesinghe or other government leaders.
Since then the JVP
has been at the forefront of defending Kumaratungas anti-democratic
actions and demanding that she take further steps against the UNF. At
the JVPs behest, the president yesterday removed 39 junior ministers
from their posts and stripped them of the privileges of officethe
use of government vehicles and other equipment. She accused them of
criminal misappropriation of public property and threatened
unspecified action against them. The JVP then went further, calling
on Kumaratunga to take over the posts of any corrupt senior
cabinet ministers.
Quoted in his partys
press, JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe took up the theme of corruption
and poured scorn on those in ruling circles who have criticised the
cost of the electionthe third in less than four years. The
government says 450 million rupees have to be spent on an election.
But if this government continues, how much will be lost in fraud and
corruption? he declared. Amarasinghe added: This government
that is defending robbers but not giving a place to genuine entrepreneurs...
would waste millions of money. Because of that an immediate general
election is a must.
Amarasinghes
appeal to genuine entrepreneurs has a particular significance.
For the purposes of appealing to workers, students and small farmers,
the JVP at times still uses some of the Maoist and Castroite rhetoric
on which it was founded in the 1960s. While the more astute layers of
the ruling class know full well that the JVP has never been a genuine
socialist party, there remain concerns that its posturing against privatisation
and foreign corporations could become a barrier to the further
implementation of economic restructuring.
Amarasinghes
remark was designed to allay those fears. To make certain it was understood,
he went on to say that the alliance would ensure a corruption
free environment. I clearly state that an alliance government
would create such a situation and encourage investors. No one should
be nervous that investment will not be received, he declared.
The JVP leaders
are aiming to exploit their alliance with the SLFP and the election
campaign to bring them one step closer to state power. The party directly
appeals to layers of young people, workers and rural poor that have
been hard hit by the economic reforms instituted both by the UNF and
the previous PA governments. While not necessarily subscribing to the
JVPs vicious communal politics, many ordinary people nevertheless
regard it as an alternative to the two established parties. The JVP
opportunistically exploits this dissatisfaction by making sweeping,
but completely empty, promises that are impossible to meet under the
capitalist system it has pledged to maintain.
In the weeks prior
to the dissolution of parliament, the JVP intensified its agitation
against the governments economic policies. It played a prominent
role in organising a railway strike, an industrial campaign by health
workers and opposition to planned changes to the labour laws. Last week
farmers launched a protest in Colombo against the rise of fertiliser
price under the UNF. As soon as the election was announced, the JVP
called off the protests and strikes, declaring that a future alliance
government would solve all these problems.
Within the alliance,
the JVP calculates that it will have the whip hand. The SLFP may be
the older, larger and more established political party but it is deeply
compromised by its eight years in office from 1994 to 2001. The JVP
has dictated the political basis of the alliance platform, which begins
by denouncing the UNF for betraying the nation to the LTTE and foreign
interests. There is no doubt that in the shrill chauvinist election
campaign that will unfold against the UNF, the demagogues of the JVP
will play the leading role.
Deep political crisis
The prominence of
the JVP in the present situation is the sharpest expression of the putrification
of bourgeois politics in Sri Lanka and the depth of the current crisis.
Just over a decade ago, the party was illegal. In the late 1980s, it
led a murderous campaign against the Indo-Lanka Accordthe first
attempt by a section of the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie to end the civil
war. In the name of saving the nation, JVP hit squads killed hundreds
of workers, trade union officials and party leaders who refused to fall
into line with its policies.
Kumaratunga brought
the JVP back into official political life in 1994 after she won the
presidential election. Certain elements within the ruling class regarded
the party as a useful potential safety valve amid mounting social tensions.
JVP leaders found themselves courted by corporate circles and given
prominent coverage in the media. In the general elections of the same
year, the party received a modest 81,560 votes and won one seat.
The JVPs electoral
successes over the subsequent decade are a reflection of the inability
of either the SLFP-led Peoples Alliance or the UNF government to meet
the needs and aspirations of ordinary working people. The JVP has simply
played the same political card, albeit in a particularly extreme form,
used by all bourgeois political parties in Sri Lanka for the last 50
years: namely, anti-Tamil chauvinism.
When the Kumaratunga
government attempted to pass a package of constitutional reforms in
2000 to start peace talks with the LTTE, the JVP, joined by Wickremesinghes
United National Party, mounted a chauvinist campaign against the move.
Now that Wickremesinghe has begun negotiations with the LTTE, his UNF
government has become the target of the JVPs political attacks.
The JVP has gained
at the expense of both major parties, particularly the SLFP which built
its support in rural areas on the basis of directly appealing to Sinhala
nationalism. In the 2000 election the JVP received 518,774 votes and
won 10 seats. After Kumaratungas government collapsed in 2001,
the chauvinists increased their vote to 815,353 and their seats to 16
in the election of December that year.
Now the JVP is looking
for far larger gains. As the price of its alliance with the SLFP, it
has been allocated 42 seats in the upcoming elections. There is no doubt
that many of these will be in areas where its support is the strongest,
and which, without the SLFP in the contest, it hopes to win. With a
bloc of this size, the JVP leadership feels it will be in a strong position
to increasingly dictate the course of events.
The political impasse
of the last three months reflects a fundamental dilemma confronting
the ruling class. Sections of big business in Colombo want an end to
the countrys 20-year civil war to encourage investment and integrate
the island into the processes of global production. But to end the war,
they confront the legacy of decades of communal politics which they
have themselves fomented to divide the working class and shore up bourgeois
rule.
The election will
do nothing to resolve this crisis. If the UNF is returned, the conflict
with Kumaratunga will only continue and intensify. If the SLFP-JVP wins
power, the ensuing alliance government would likely plunge
the country back into civil war. Moreover, all the contradictions contained
in this marriage of convenience would rapidly come to the surface. Such
is the depth of the splits in the political establishment and the tensions
generated by the deepening social polarisation that the mechanisms of
bourgeois democracy have all but exhausted themselves.
The JVPs enthusiastic
support for Kumaratungas anti-democratic moves are the clearest
warning that it is offering its services to the ruling class should
extra-parliamentary forms of rule be required. Its contempt for democratic
rights was summed up in the remarks of JVP Propaganda Secretary Wimal
Weerawansa to the Daily Mirror this week. In defending the presidents
actions, he bluntly declared: The peoples mandate and the
opinion of the general public is important, and not the parliamentary
majority.
Weerawansas
comments have more than a whiff of fascism about them. There have been
no mass popular demonstrations demanding the ousting of the government.
Moreover, as opinion polls and elections results have demonstrated over
the last decade, the majority of the population wants an end to the
civil war. Yet, the JVP arrogantly asserts that it alone articulates
the will of the people.
Weerawansas
statement is a sharp warning to the working class that the JVP, should
it fail to win power through the ballot, will not hesitate to use other
meanseither with or without the SLFP.