By Uditha Devapriya –

Uditha Devapriya

With three weeks left for presidential elections in Sri Lanka, the government and Opposition are in a frenzy to make their policies clear to the public. While Ranil Wickremesinghe, contesting as an independent candidate but backed by the more right-wing MPs of the SLPP, has emphasised continuity, the SJB and NPP have offered alternatives which vary in degree as well as substance from each other. Both emphasise the need to renegotiate with the IMF, even though the SJB, specifically its economic troika, have cautioned against what it frames as the NPP’s populist outbursts against the IMF agreement.

The NPP faces a blowback from three sources. The SJB is one, the Wickremesinghe-SLPP-UNP alliance another. A third source is the Alliance for People’s Struggle. Led by aragalaya activists and headed by Nuwan Bopage, this political alliance portrays itself to the left of the NPP, and has been more critical of the IMF agreement. It does not call for renegotiation of the agreement but a complete exit. On the other hand, as a movement that includes the Frontline Socialist Party and the Inter-University Students’ Front or IUSF, it has attempted to tap into the post-aragalaya radicalisation of the youth.

Given the overwhelming presence of the Frontline Socialist Party (FPS), it is tempting to view the conflict between the Alliance for People’s Struggle (APS) and the NPP as a microcosm of the ideological split between the JVP and the FSP. For instance, APS supporters have called out on the NPP’s supposed pandering to the Buddhist sangha. It has also questioned what it sees as the NPP’s silence on the National Question and has taken the NPP to task over its ambivalent position on postwar accountability and transitional justice. These have fuelled criticisms of the party from other candidates and outfits as well.

The NPP stands accused of being purist. Thus, while the SJB has welcomed and openly embraced ex-SLPP MPs who served as Ministers under Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the NPP recently declared, with barely concealed pride, that it had turned away some of those ex-MPs when they tried to join the NPP’s campaign. At the same time, the party has only now shown where it stands on the ethnic issue and the relationship between Buddhism and the State. The APS seems to be using this to attack the NPP and to position itself as the more preferable radical left option for anti-government forces. Only time will tell whether these strategies will work and who they will end up benefitting.

The NPP is at a crossroads here. On the one hand, as the definitive anti-establishment party having a parliamentary presence, it believes it should not dally with establishment political forces. In its book, this includes both the pro-Wickremesinghe SLPP and the SLPPers now with either Namal Rajapaksa, the SJB, or Dilith Jayaweera’s Sarvajana Balaya. On the other hand, by dint of its parliamentary presence, it needs to seize the moment by appealing to as large a crowd as it can. As the experience of other leftwing and social democratic parties, even in the West, suggests, this means that it has, since inception in 2019, been moderating its stances on economic and political issues. Its evolving position on the IMF agreement and the recently held conclave of bhikkhus are two examples of this.

The APS probably feels it has no such obligation to moderate itself because it has no parliamentary presence, but also because it sees its rival as part of the same establishment that that rival criticises. The APS’s manifesto, released last week, emphasises justice for minorities and promises a carry-forward of the aragalaya. The APS was formed officially in June. It calls itself a left political alliance, and it openly positions itself “as an alternative to the false belief that the only solution for Sri Lanka’s social, political, and economic crisis is through an election.” In other words, its narrative seems to be that while the NPP touts itself as an alternative, that alternative is no better than the establishment.

To rephrase this, if the NPP has framed the SJB and UNP-SLPP as one and the same, the APS has gone further and lumped the NPP with the latter crowd. It goes without saying that this is somewhat of a distortion of the facts as they stand. Yet the APS’s argument would be that, even though the NPP is fond of saying that it has not been part of the so-called 76-year-curse in this country, the JVP, which is probably the dominant unit in the NPP, has been in coalition and government politics in the past as well. This is a serious claim, one which has been taken up by the SJB and the Wickremesinghe camp. Both the SJB and the UNP, in fact, have emphasised the JVP’s past support for Mahinda Rajapaksa.

In any case, the APS does not seem to have registered that half the criticisms it is airing against the NPP have been taken up by the liberal and right-wing establishment as well. Along the way, as is typical of anti-left-wing liberal “progressive” circles in the country, the NPP has been turned into a straw man. Without even reading the election manifesto, for instance, critics of the NPP, from the SLPP and the SJB, argue that the NPP is opposed to private education and will shut down private universities. Yet even a cursory reading of the manifesto reveals that it wants to regulate private education, not abolish it.

This is not to deny the validity of these claims. No party is or should be free from critique. Yet critique should be constructive. For instance, it is constructive to ask why no concrete proposals on the National Question have been included in the NPP Manifesto. Supporters of the NPP have countered that, unlike the SLPP, the party is not indulging in chauvinist rhetoric to grab votes. It is also constructive to ask what the NPP’s plans for electoral alliances and partnerships – always a sine qua non of politics in Sri Lanka – would be in the event the party wins elections. The NPP’s response has been that it will wait or that it will not associate with any individual or party lacking their threshold for political pedigree.

However, the level of straw-manning vis-à-vis the NPP has been incredible. It’s not just about private universities. At least one person has insinuated that the NPP, rather the JVP, needs to unplug itself from student unions. This overlooks the fact that much of our student unions are dominated by the IUSF, whose officials have sided with the APS and Nuwan Bopage. On the other hand, the post-aragalaya radicalisation of the youth seems to have benefitted the NPP relative to the IUSF and FSP. There is more sympathy evident on the streets and in our universities for the party. Far from unplugging itself from student unions, the NPP thus sees it as strategically vital and imperative to tap into them.

What is more incredible than the straw-manning is the redbaiting. Supporters of the SLPP and Ranil Wickremesinghe cast the NPP as left-nationalist if not fringe communist utopian à la Pol Pot. SJB activists and even some officials have been indulging in this as well. To put that as facetiously as I can, if I had a dollar every time someone invoked Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and of course North Korea, in relation to the NPP, I suspect I would not want for anything soon. What these attitudes reveal is not just ignorance about the geopolitics which surround these countries and the fact that we are miles away from turning into any of them in the near future, but also a lack of basic political literacy.

Such redbaiting, for some reason, has been pronounced within almost all supposedly liberal camps in the country. The fact that they have started airing these criticisms just now is not surprising. What is amusing about it all is that, in attacking the NPP for not being radical enough, the APS has managed, at least on social media platforms, to push it into a cul-de-sac. This, too, should not come as a surprise. The NPP is at a stage where it has had both to moderate itself and present itself as a radical alternative. It is possible to be demonised for being both a plank of the status quo and a subversive anti-establishment force. The NPP, and the JVP in particular, have had to eat the cake and suffer it too.

This is why I find even criticisms of the NPP regarding its position on the National Question somewhat problematic. In electoral democracies – which Sri Lanka has been, since 1931 – there will always be a tendency for parties working within the parliamentary system to move to the centre. Neither the NPP nor the JVP has been exceptions to this. However, in moving to the centre, some parties veer to the left, some to the right. For instance, in 1956, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, while embracing a Sinhala nationalist line, veered to the left, partly because it wanted to pre-empt the socialist parties. Conversely, when the SLFP took over from 16 years of UNP rule in 1994, it embraced a Third Way Centrist line to affirm what it called “neoliberalism with a human face.” It is telling that one journalist-cum-activist has, on social media, accused the NPP of bending to the latter tendency.

The JVP’s stance on the ethnic issue has a long, tenuous history. Rohana Wijeweera, for instance, wrote a long essay on it. He wrote it, we must recall, at a particular time and place, when the National Question was intimately linked to the issue of Indian intervention in Sri Lanka. Wijeweera thus framed the ethnic conflict through the lens of the latter. The situation has changed considerably since. The NPP, and the JVP, appear to have discarded what their critics often framed as their chauvinism. Left-liberal activists seem to have taken this as an indication that the NPP would openly advocate for devolution and transitional justice in its campaign. That it has not done so seems to have upset them.

Minority parties have yet to respond to these omissions. Even if they won’t, they have made their allegiances clear. Since the 1970s and 1980s, communal parties have preferred to side with if not engage right-wing over radical left-wing political forces. Thus, while the Ceylon Workers’ Congress has allied with Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Tamil Progressive Alliance has chosen the SJB. Muslim parties and politicians have split between the Wickremesinghe and Premadasa camps as well. Meanwhile, Namal Rajapaksa and Dilith Jayaweera are also talking to minorities. So is the NPP. Yet it remains to be seen whether the latter’s rhetoric of anti-corruption will work on constituencies that prefer communal parties.

Minority groups have always been one concern for anti-establishment parties. The other is the left-liberal caucus. This is represented by civil society activists, analysts, academics, and other professionals, including lawyers, doctors, and journalists. Many of them have sounded out their disappointment with the NPP. Some are painting the party as being no different to majoritarian outfits, including Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s SLPP. While this is a gross simplification, such comparisons have been regurgitated by right-wingers who, for instance, compare the NPP’s tax proposals to Rajapaksa’s fiscal policies. It is certainly ironic that both the right and sections of the left are complicit in the miscolouring of the NPP.

The history of the Left in Sri Lanka has, at one level, been a history of factional splits and ideological disputes. The first breakup took place in 1943, with the establishment of the Communist Party. Since then, the Left, Old and New, have divided between and within themselves. Sri Lanka, however, is regularly touted as Asia’s oldest democracy. As one leftist commentator noted years ago, if anything, the Sri Lankan Left has survived by making concessions to electoral politics. This can be construed as a compromise or a betrayal of values, depending on which side you are on. Nevertheless, as the NPP’s campaign makes it clear, even the most radical party will have to account for the complexities of Sri Lanka’s electoral system – even if it is pitted against the establishment.

*Uditha Devapriya is a regular commentator on history, art and culture, politics, and foreign policy who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com.