By Rajan Philips –

Rajan Philips

Questions continue to be speculated about the true intentions of the JVP in orchestrating the NPP government – whether the JVP is still committed to its old Marxist-Leninist policies and whether it may or may not implement them through its NPP front. Further, will the JVP/NPP allow Sri Lanka’s multi-party democracy to continue or resort to one party governance like in countries where a Communist Party is in power? The fact that local government elections were held under an NPP government after a seven year hiatus is conveniently forgotten. That the LG elections had previously been postponed and cancelled by non-Marxist governments is now never mentioned.   

And then the scaremongering – if the NPP government were to fail and suffer defeat at the next election, will it pave the way for the return of the Rajapaksas, yet again, but this time under a new generation led by the supposedly hugely talented Namal Rajapaksa? There were pre-election predictions that Namal Rajapaksa and the rump that is left of the SLPP might overtake Sajith Premadasa’s SJB in the LG elections. That did not happen.

The Rajapaksa scion is still safely in third place by quite a distance after the SJB and its lackluster leader, the slightly older but still the only young Premadasa in Sri Lankan politics. For company, they have a really old man, i.e., Ranil Wickremesinghe who is capable of many things, but gracefully retiring is not one of them. At least, and to his credit, he lives in his own house and takes no residential perk at government expense unlike all the other ex-presidential freeloaders.

Philistine Preoccupations

It is not unfair to say that most of these commentaries are nothing but philistine preoccupations passing for serious politics. The word ‘philistine’ was a favourite term of Engels (the second fiddle to Marx’s first violin) and it is appropriate now since Marxism is at the tip of the tongue of everyone who wants to take a shot at the NPP government. The term is also an apt one to fling at the right wing populists, who are now becoming less popular in their western backyards thanks to their greatest specimen – Donald J. Trump

And what a philistine specimen Trump is constantly devolving into – the latest stage being his disgusting White House encounter last Wednesday with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Less said of it is better for your bile and if you saw it on television you would have instantly noticed the difference between a contemptible mammon out of Florida and a consummate statesman from Soweto.

As epithets are flung around to capture the antics of Trump, the latest comes from the usually measured Paul Krugman, distinguished American economist who was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for his work on “trade patterns and location of economic activity.” Krugman knows something about tariffs and economics, and the other day he called Trump and his sidekicks “sadistic zombies”.   

Many among the Sri Lankan opposition politicians might be considered zombies, but none of them could be thought of as being sadistic. To close this loop on Trump and his dystopic global presence, one needs to acknowledge his primeval effectiveness in pushing people around to get his way. More so with foreign leaders than his opponents at home. But he uses this effectiveness to feed his ego and enrich his family and not at all to make a difference in the world’s trouble spots where the American government has more sway than anyone else.

This was quite evident on Trump’s recent visit to the Arab world that was all about glitter and one-way gifts including a flying palace, and nothing at all for American foreign policy, let alone for the wretched of the earth in Gaza or the slow burning of Ukraine. One noticeable fact of the visit was Trump’s deliberate snubbing of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Not only did Trump go to Riyad and Doha bypassing Jerusalem but he also sent a message to Netanyahu that he would deal directly with Netanyahu’s enemies including Hamas, Iran and the Houthis. To what great outcome, no one knows. At the same time, Trump’s apparent sidelining of Netanyahu together with the joint condemnation of Netanyahu’s latest Gaza plans by Britain, France and Canada, seemed to tighten the screws on Netanyahu and signaled a new opportunity for reining in Israel’s runaway leader and his notoriously right wing government.

All that came crashing down with the insane assassination, on Wednesday, of two young Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington by a lone gunman, 30 year old Chicago native Elias Rodriguez, shouting “Free, free, Palestine”. All that this politically deranged individual has achieved is to free Netanyahu to go ahead with his Gaza plans and to prolong the misery of the Palestinians who are under constant bombardment in Gaza.

Sri Lanka’s Durable Political System

Today’s Sri Lanka is fortunate to have finally come out of its own decades of political violence, and after several missed opportunities following the end of the war in 2009, the country finally has a government that for its all its inexperience in governing has shown consistent commitment to honesty, decency and transparency. Yet many commentators are rankled by the irony that a government whose political progenitor was a violent insurrectionist could now be a paragon of multi-party democracy.

Their constant allusion to Marxism is really a code for recalling the JVP’s violent past. Never mind that the past had come and gone 30 and 50 years ago. They conveniently ignore the possibility that the JVP could have and may actually have transformed itself from its pre-history to its current manifestation. Its current commitment to the parliamentary system and multi-party democracy is no less authentic than any of the other political parties. If at all the JVP/NPP is more honest about it than every other party.

As well, those who agonize that the JVP might terminate Sri Lanka’s muti-party democracy and opt for some version of the political systems in countries such as Vietnam, China, Russia or even Cuba, fail to take into account the history and the currency of Sri Lanka’s political system that has proved to be quite durable, so much so that any political party that that tries to subvert or supplant it will do so at its own peril. And Sri Lanka’s political system, its history and currency, are not comparable to what are prevalent in the four countries that I have mentioned.

The governing parties in these countries have been in power for as long as their polities have been in existence, and they have no reason to think of changing their respective mode of government now or later. In contrast, the JVP/NPP government has come to power through the electoral process, and it has no incentive to think of changing that process now or later. Sri Lanka’s political system has not been without ailments, and the most debilitating of them has been the presidential system. Of all the political parties, it is only the JVP/NPP that is fervently committed to curing Sri Lanka of that enervating illness. Whether it will keep its promise and succeed in changing the executive presidency is a different matter.

Indian Comparisons

What is more comparable for Sri Lanka and the JVP/NPP government is the experience of the Indian states of Kerala and West Bengal where the Indian Communists have won power through the electoral process on many occasions and have acquitted themselves very well in government. In modern Kerala’s first state election in 1957, EMS Namboodiripad led the then undivided Communist Party of India (CPI) to electoral victory and a new government. That was India’s first elected Communist Government, and the world’s second – after the first elected Communist government (1945-1957) in San Marino, the tiny commune of a country in the Italian peninsula.

But the democratically elected Communist government in Kerala was undemocratically dismissed in 1959 by the Central Government in Delhi, at the insistence of a young Indira Gandhi using her influence as the President of the Congress Party, even sidelining her father and then Prime Minister Nehru. But Communists have since become a governing force in Kerala forming several governments over the years led by the CPM (the Communist Party of India – Marxist), the larger of the two factions that emerged after the Party’s ideological split in 1964. The current government in Kerala is the government of the Left Democratic Front that is led by the CPM. The LDF has been in power since 2016 – winning two consecutive elections, a feat not achieved in 40 years.         

In West Bengal, the CPM was in power continuously for 34 years from 1977 to 2011. Jyoti Basu, a Communist leader of national prominence was, Chief Minister of West Bengal from 1977 to 2000 and is recognized as the longest serving Chief Minister in India. In 1996, he was offered the chance to become India’s Prime Minister as head of a United Front alliance of non-Congress and non-BJP parties. But the great Bengali declined the offer in deference to his Party Polit Bureau’s lamebrained doctrinaire decision barring him from becoming Prime Minister in a coalition government. Unlike in Kerala, the CPM has not been able to alternate in government after its defeat in 2011. The Party was decimated in the last Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections by Trinamool Congress a state-level party like the DMK in Tamil Nadu.          

What the JVP/NPP has achieved in Sri Lanka is unique to Sri Lanka and, comparable to the Indian situations, the NPP’s electoral success poses no threat to the political system in Sri Lanka. The NPP government has completed only six months in office, but its critics are insistent on seeing results. They will not bother to look at what the present government’s predecessors respectively did in the first six months after elections in 2010, 2015 and 2019.  At the same time, while is still too early for substantial results, it is getting late enough to get by without showing some work in progress, let alone some tangible achievements. It is about time.