By Kumar David –

Prof. Kumar David

Readers may have observed that in recent weeks I have been suggesting that with the backing of global capitalism and India and with IMF support assured (Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has backed the Staff Level Agreement), Ranil Wickremesinghe’s (RW) administration will be stable UP TO an election. It is an open question whether till then it will be authoritarian or revert to a democratic form which will delight liberals, the intellectual classes, the minorities and the carvings of those in SJB whose psyche never actually quit the UNP. None can foresee in these tumultuous times how liberal RW’s administration will be, or whether it will WIN an election in a few months. More problematic, can it win an election at the end of the tenure of the current parliament. These are not times in which intelligent people take bets.

However it seems reasonable to say that the medium-term choice (say in a few years) will be between RW as defined above (or a RW-Sajith alliance) and the JVP which is gaining ground. I grant that posing the question so bluntly is a short-cut that ignores intermediate options, but I am impatient to explore the Ranil-plus-global-capitalism versus the JVP-plus “socialist-market-dirigisme” alternatives. The relationship between the RW+ option and the JVP+ formula will revolve around two central issues; factors pertaining to the economy and social class, and the rights of the Tamil people (Muslims are less complicating) which is at the heart of the democracy and political stability question. 

Take the Tamil thing first. Historically and probably in the future the JVP is a on a very bad wicket about the Tamils, but internationally, on account of the dire state of the post-Covid, post-Ukraine/Russia world, and the Sino-US confrontation, it may be on a better wicket in the long-term. I am at a loss to think of a way in which the JVP can repair its relationship with the Tamils. Mind you as a member of the NPP I have a vested interest and a genuine wish that this be done; but it’s not going to be easy. The problem has two dimensions, a past and a present. The past stretches from Wijeweera’s lecture on Indian expansionism which was actually aimed against upcountry Tamils, rejection on 13A, Provincial Councils and devolution to the Tamils, all the way to the Somawansa-JVP’s successful Supreme Court petition in 2006 to axe the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces. Although the merger had never been ratified by the people of the East, the JVP by this act fomented an anti-Tamil taste in the nation’s mouth. 

The JVP is still opposed to devolution of power to Tamil areas and the Provinces. Some leaders may have changed their minds but this will not be endorsed by the Central Committee because the CC still mentally lives in the petty-bourgeois world of its grandparents and also because it still, needlessly, fears a Sinhala-Buddhist electoral backlash. The leadership must take the bull by the horns and defeat this frame of mind in the cadre or it will get nowhere. If a JVP comes to power without ironing out this dispute it will drown. The options before a future JVP government are: Accept devolution or suffer political death while in office like the racists JR, Sirima, SWRD and even DS. 

Ranil’s ancestors were accustomed to mixing with Tamils, Burghers and Muslims of the same rank and attended socially diversified elite schools. His uncle Lakshman Wickremesinghe, Bishop of Kurunegala was a redoubtable scholar (top of the list in political science, University of Ceylon – not mere Peradeniya or U of SL) and then enrolled at Keeble College, Oxford, but quit to take up robes. He was pained by RW’s involvement in JR’s racist regime and in particular its attack on the Tamils. After Black July 1983 Bishop was one of the first leaders to go to Jaffna, but died of a heart attack in three months in October. RW is neither morally nor intellectually of the same stature but some of the liberalism may have rubbed off. 

Last week (11 Sept) I undertook an update of my previous RW SWOT appraisal and discussed economic prospects; I will not repeat any of this here but I would like to make some remarks about the changing international context. What I have termed a socialist-market-dirigisme option somewhat echoes China, Vietnam and a few emerging African states. Cuba and Venezuela have collapsed into basket cases but in the context of the leftward sweep across Latin America (Central and South America) there may be hope of resurrection. It’s this sweep that I wish to say a few words about because star-gazers may wish for a return of the 1960s and early 1970s but one has to a realist. Revolutionary columns led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos entered Havana on 1 January 1959; Saigon fell on 30 April 1975. Some may sing “Those were the days my friend we thought would never end!” So, mutatis mutandis, can we take hope from the leftist sweep rolling across Latin America now that neo-liberal and neo-conservative global supremacy will soon pass? The question must be approached with hard logic.

The swearing in of thirty-six-year-old Gabriel Boric who calls himself a “libertarian socialist” but is a Marxist as Chile’s president marks the most radical reshaping of the country’s politics in 50 years. It follows victory of former guerrilla Gustavo Petro in Colombia last month. Between 2018 and 2021 left-of-centre candidates won the presidency in Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Argentina and Peru. Iris Xiomara Castro Sarmiento a Honduran leftist, in office since January 2022 promised: “My government will not continue the maelstrom of looting that has condemned generations of young people to debts incurred behind their back”. (Oh, for an Iris in Lanka). Many in the new crop are de facto Marxists. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva leads in opinion polls ahead of Brazil’s October election. Brazil is the most populous and important country next to the USA on the American Continent. Its gross GDP in PPP terms exceeds Canada’s.

The world is very different today from the 1960s. In so far as emergent left regimes, the world over are concerned. The big difference is the absence of a supportive Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. For reasons to do with trade, technology transfer, investment and global supply chains, China has a very different relationship with the US from the hostile stand-off between Stalin and the USA. Nevertheless, since the JVP does not live in circumstances that permit the capture of power by insurrection, the absence of old Soviet style support as for revolutions in Cuba and Vietnam may not make a great difference. The follies of 1971 and 1989-90 are long gone, a bad dream, a nightmare buried. If a JVP-NPP administration is to win in Sri Lanka it will have to triumph at a democratic election. (I confessed at the beginning that this jumps over possible intermediate events, but I feel that the dice is weighted against military dictatorship or Ranil autocracy).

Democracy is no longer a deception used by the ruling classes to fool the mases and perpetuate property rights and power. For reasons that are too complex to discuss at this point there has been an alteration in the significance of democratic expectations. Neither the JVP, or for that matter still authoritarian China can reverse the rootedness of democratic expectations in society at large. Democratic norms are the expectation of the masses. For better or worse the JVP is “stuck” with abiding by the outcome of a free and fair election; no more silly 1971 style insurrections or murderous grabs as in 1989-90. 

In so far as the Ranil-plus-global-capitalism versus JVP-plus socialist-market-dirigisme economic options are concerned and assuming the continuance of democracy, the choice depends on whether an RW-road feeds and clothes people for the next two or three years. The Ranil road of course includes variations such as a Ranil-Sajith alliance. Essentially it is the liberal, bourgeois-democratic, IMF-Western oriented economic road that the country has now set out on. Obviously, there will be belt-tightening but two years from now will people vote to stay with this capitalist road for another, say five-year parliamentary term? A factor is whether the Executive Presidency is abolished in between, but this will change appearances but probably not substance.

Otherwise it will have to be the JVP way; new wine in a new bottle. The new wine, a democratic JVP, the new bottle the new world order responding to a sweeping hurtle to the left in Latin America. Admittedly unprecedent global economic crises pose a huge challenge to these new Latin Am regimes. In Sri Lanka If the capitalist option is re-elected for another say five years one can envisage the JVP playing a left opposition parliamentary role as did the left parties in the 1950s and 1960s. Though “Che-group” was the pseudonym of the JVP in the 1960s and though Wijeweera modelled his headgear on Che’s iconic cap, it is impossible for tomorrow’s JVP to revert to the madness of its previous reckless incarnation whatever happens in Latin America.