By Kumar David –

Prof. Kumar David

[In the first half of this essay I ignore RW‘s pernicious attempt to scrap local and eventually general elections. In the second part I comment on the matter to the extent relevant to my conversation. There will be a flood of Editorials and comments soon. It is too early to see how the matter will eventually go].

The National People’s Power (NPP) movement consists of an alliance of 29 left and social democratic parties, trade unions, minority organisations and grass-roots groups. It is about five years old. The JVP on the other hand is well known and its origins go back over 50 years. The structure and capability of the two are significantly different and they can complement each other to achieve shared objectives. For example, together they can aspire to form a social-democratic government, commit to the welfare of the masses, negotiate through the snares of international finance capital, promote human rights and create a unified nation by confronting and defeating racist and religious prejudices.

Covering period 1 Oct 2021 to 14 July 2022
https://www.ihp.lk/news/pres_doc/SLOTSReport202208.pdf

Stop! This is the fairy-tale and it won’t happen simply by dreaming; it requires dedication, intelligence, coordination and hard work. The two organisations have different and complementary roles. The NPP consists of well-educated persons with a grounding in many domains of professional expertise and in the last two years it has attracted a further tranche of intellectuals, liberals, lawyers, economists and other scholars to supplement the older cadre of Marxists and social-democrats. The strength of the JVP of course lies in its mass base, its ability to mobilise tens of thousands in the villages, towns, trade unions, campuses and on the streets. If the NPP and the JVP work together smoothly, it will be like a perfect match of hand and glove. 

Don’t get euphoric! People say, newspaper columnists claim and commentators swear that there is an electoral landslide visible and the NPP-JVP-combo is going win the next general election. Balderdash! A programme has not even been written! What is the economic, social, debt-restructuring, investment, foreign trade and foreign policy programme of these worthies? No one knows because it has not even been drafted. Is the NPP sleeping? Yes, I said before that the NPP and JVP can, I repeat CAN, play excellent complementary roles. The NPP has the internal intellectual resources to write, debate and adopt a national programme, but I have yet even to hear of the convening of an NPP Conference. The JVP of course will participate (not bully its way) in the Conference and once the programme is adopted it is the JVP which will take it to the masses. But there is not much time to get on with it. When are these blighters going to wake up! Don’t call me impatient. All this has still to be done.

There is an even more important goal in the relationship than the NPP’s fitness to write a common programme and a JVP’s ability to carry it to the people. The presence of the NPP in a future government will embody a guarantee of (a) democracy and (b) minority rights. This reassurance is crucial. The NPP must assert its determination to uphold democracy as this will reassure the people that a return to the excesses of 1971 and 1989-91 will not be repeated. The people, especially Sinhalese people in villages and towns, need to be sure that the bad experiences and insurrectionary excesses associated with the unfortunate past of the JVP will not recur. A strong social democratic NPP with an authoritative influence in the alliance can provide such an assurance. 

Similar considerations pertain to the JVP’s past record in respect of minority rights – Wijeweera’s fifth lecture, antagonism to plantation Tamils and the Somawansa-Sarath Silva experiences. If an NPP-JVP alliance were to face an election with fear lingering in the minds of the Sinhalese masses about freedoms and doubts in the minds of the Tamils and Muslims about minority concerns, the performance of the alliance at the elections will be diminished. To say it again in different words; the NPP must have the power to exercise control over the functioning of a future government on matters pertaining to democracy and minority rights. We don’t want to sleep walk into a nightmare, do we?  The NPP needs to be a controlling partner alongside the JVP. 

There are three ways in which things may evolve, apart from danger of militarisation. We must not for a moment take our eye off the military threat which can strike suddenly; Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa have long histories of hostility to democracy and will willingly lend their support to military stratagems. Military regimes are the foulest and vilest of all forms of rule; the cruelty they inflict on citizens, women and political opponents is barbaric. We must not say that the military threat is minimal in Sri Lanka and lower our guard. It only takes one misstep to go down a fatal track. In this context RW’s efforts to prevent elections later this year becomes very disturbing. RW’s Uncle JR went so far as to threaten to impeach Samarakoon CJ when he was unable to bend him to his wishes. Be sure that RW will do all he can to 

undermine the Elections Department and interfere with the courts in an attempt to prevent elections. He will not hesitate to send out troops to crush protesters demanding elections.

The first of the  three other ways in which events may drift is a wave of religious and racist extremism led by near-fascist contingents of the clergy marching in lock-step with mobilisation against 13A. Rajan Philips in his column last week says: “Anura Kumara Dissanayake owes it to the people to explain his position on devolution and on 13A  even if he does not agree with the President’s timing and approach to implementing 13A”. RP is perfectly correct but I consider race-riots the least likely of the three options. 

The second possibility is that the IMF, the Western powers and international finance may reach out to stabilise the RW presidency. We do read that conditions are being stipulated, that the IMF is not fully satisfied and so on. But if the chips are down and it comes to a choice between throwing RW a life-line or countenancing an NPP/JVP electoral victory it would be naïve to think that the IMF and global capitalism will hesitate to extend a helping hand to RW by strengthening his economic prospects over the next 24 months. India too wants investment opportunities and the Trinco oil farm and is favourably inclined to stabilising RW. It seems that the IMF and Western Powers are inclined to give Sri Lanka a break; that is an opportunity to come out of the quagmire without imposing horrendous burdens. Recent electricity price increases show that this may not be possible. 

I have argued previously this column that the West, India and possibly China are NOT willing to let the Sri Lankan economy collapse, and more important, are unlikely to let the country flop into anarchy. As one of the few surviving post-colonial democracies this they find impermissible. Giant India is another story as a democracy while Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea are off-again on-again democracies. However, if RW goes ahead with his plans to prevent elections and uses the military to crush opposition, the West will be in a dilemma. Maybe class interests will prevail over concerns about democracy.       

This has multifaceted implications. Stabilising the Sri Lankan economy over the next say 18-24 months will, in the first instance, be favourable to the Ranil Wickremesinghe Presidency. The downside to this is that RW has an anti-democratic past; it is not without reason that he is known as Batalanda Ranil and he cannot be trusted to be sympathetic to democratic freedoms. Recently he sent his military goons to crush Aragalaya activists who were asleep. I am aware of the cock-eyed demands of some Aragalaya activists such as the Frontline Socialists who demand that their programmes be accepted by the government even if they fail to win a single seat in Parliament!  What planet do such loonies come from? But you do not send your gorilla troops to batter and bash young people who are fast asleep!! And the Internet is replete with images of Ranil’s lecherous bob-squeezing cops. 

The third option of course is what I have discussed at length in the first portion of this article, an NPP/JVP election victory. I will not repeat any of it but only emphasise that to win the election the NPP programme must underline guarantees of democracy for the Sinhala people and assurances of protection of minority rights to satisfy the Tamils and Muslims. In power the balance of power between the partners in an NPP/JVP government must ensure that these guarantees are retained. 

I will draw attention to one final matter before signing off. We live in a much-changed world and the NPP has a vital lesson to pick up from Brazil’s President Lula. Democracy who declared in 2018 “we cannot grow up until the people themselves grow up”. He was referring to his own base, his cadres and those who rallied behind him. The struggle to overcome narrowmindedness, disrespect for democracy and human rights and the protection of all the peoples of Brazil’s much variegated population has to begin at home; it has to begin within the ranks of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Worker’s Praty) a Social-Democratic/Socialist paty. The NPP must ponder this and fearlessly defy extremists and religious and racial fanatics close to its and the JVP’s base.