By Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe –

Ajit Rupasinghe

The lizard is renowned for its ability to change colours at will to camouflage itself. That is a unique bio-chemical evolutionary trait specific to the species. The JVP should be preserved for all posterity as a supremely rare, antiquated museum showpiece and evolutionary specimen of the ‘Reptilian Politics of the Lizard’. Lanka’s unique contribution to evolutionary biology and mutant politics. I shall systematically enumerate this bio-chemical political trajectory of the evolution and transmogrification of the JVP. I feel qualified to engage in this endeavour because Don Rohana Patabandige Wijeweera was at one time a ranking member, who was consequently expelled from our party. That is, the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist), led at that time by the late Comrade Sanmugathasan. This was due to his insidious chauvinism and rank petit-bourgeois opportunism. This chauvinism ran deep. One of the five lectures provided by the JVP in the march up to the 1971 insurrection, the JVP declared the Hill Country Tamil nationality as the “Fifth Column of Indian Expansionism” and defined this most exploited and degraded section of the working class as an enemy of the Revolution.

It is my opinion, the JVP was wiped out at the recent General Election mainly due to being rejected for its reptilian camouflage politics. The JVP is the foremost revisionist force that has betrayed the cause of Revolutionary Marxism and Socialism. No other ‘Left’ force has so tainted the red flag of Socialism, Revolution and Communism with the blood of the people, with naked, virulent chauvinism and served the Capitalist State and its ruling class in protecting and defending its Unitary State and its class dictatorship. Providing life-saving oxygen to the defunct, neo-colonial Capitalist State and then projecting itself as the only one and true Socialist liberator of the people requires such convoluted, kaleidoscopic gymnastics that even a trained circus lizard would find difficult to deliver. Somewhere along the sunburnt theatrics, the true colours of the Lizard is bound to be exposed and invoke the just revulsion of the poor and oppressed masses. That is mainly why the JVP was reduced to just six seats and why it had to drop off all its ‘good-governance’ pretensions and appoint defeated candidates to Parliament through the National List. The oppressed masses, although still deluded by bourgeois democratic politics and the game of elections, had no taste for the sun-scorched lizard, who could only bide time in supreme crimson camouflage until it can strike at its unsuspecting prey. This imagery may be so unfair on the lizard species, since, whatever it is, it does not have an insatiable lust for power and egoistical self-glory, as does this miserable mutant human political species.

*Photo /N. Sanmugathasan (right) with Mao

For the masses of people, the crucial decision at this recently concluded General Election was whether to allow for a return to the criminal politics of the narco-driven, chauvinist-militarist, crony-mafia Rajapaksa cabal; Or to place the Sirisena-Ranil dispensation in power. This was in the hope of a new, fresh beginning of ‘ Yahapalanaya’- good governance, and just a breath of freedom and civilized decency. The JVP simply tried to exploit this particular conjuncture, and the people caught on to the game. The JVP thought it would play the role of the honest broker, even that of the Chief Justice, IGP and the Attorney General put together, who would ensure that corruption will be wiped out, all criminals brought to book and would keep a remote-control check on the State. But all they could do, and did, was to collaborate with the ruling class in some National Executive Council and parade in front of the Bribery Commission for photo-opportunities. They thought they would appear as the watch dog of bourgeois democracy; as the true and trusted guardians of the Unitary Capitalist State, and still appear as genuine Socialists. Even while openly collaborating with the new rulers, the JVP would attack them and also attack the Rajapaksa camp! This was to present itself as the only alternative Opposition that could be trusted. As Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones once sang; ‘He is practised in the art of deception’. There is a saying; ‘ You can fool some of the people, some of the time: But, you cannot fool all the people all of the time’. So, the people sent an E-Mail to the JVP. Thanks, but no thanks.com. If you are the alternative choice, then we would prefer to go with either Mahinda Rajapaksa or with Sirisena and Ranil. We will take our chances with the known devil, than with the unknown. At least we know how the known devil dances, but we do not know your tune that seems to vary with every rhythm and beat of the situation. Down with the Lizard was the verdict! 

Don Rohana Patabandige Wijeweera was awarded a scholarship to the Patrice Lumumba university by the Russian Embassy during the early Sixties. This was to compensate for his father who had been wounded in his arm due to a political conflict. During his stay in Russia, he got involved in the great international debate and struggle that raged between the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao and the Modern Revisionist Headquarters in Russia led by Nikita Khrushchev and his gang of State Monopoly Capitalists who had seized power in the Soviet Union, following the death of Stalin. Wijeweera then sided with Mao and the Chinese Communist Party. Upon his return to Sri Lanka, he joined the Ceylon Communist Party

(Maoist), led at that time by the late Comrade Sanmugathasan. He was then gung-ho for Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, and pledged constitutional allegiance to our party. From this base, he captured power in the Youth Council of the party. Soon, he was to take part in the infamous racist march led by Madame Sirimavo Bandaranaike and the leaders of the Trotskyite LSSP and the pro-Moscow, Revisionist Communist Party. This is the march that chanted “Dudley ge Bade Masala Wade, in utter, naked racist opposition to the much diluted Dudley-Chelvanayagam Pact. He was expelled from the party for his conspiratorial tactics and chauvinist politics. Wijeweera then went on to mobilize the university students under the banner of the JVP. He gave up Maoism in favour of Guevarism, which was then promoted by the Soviet Union as a weapon against Maoism. In an unbelievable summersault and change of colour that would make any sleazy lizard proud, Wijeweera was to reject Maoism and the path of the Chinese Revolution to openly embrace the Soviet Union and Guevarism, which offered a short cut to power over the head of the masses.

Wijeweera and the JVP first adopted the principle of the right of national self-determination and seemed to support the struggle of the Tamil National Liberation Movement. Suddenly, from nowhere came a barrage of literature denouncing this right of self-determination and the Tamil National Liberation Movement as a “CIA-JR-Thondaman” conspiracy. This versatile Lizard could not only change colour, but also provide a verbose barrage of literature to justify it. In his plagiarized Magnum Opus titled “The National Question and its Solution” he vowed that he would hang every Eelamist on a lamppost. He denounced the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist) with utmost venom and stated that the Maoists and those who hold to its theory of New Democratic Revolution, should first be flattened. Comrade Shan and myself were placed high on the hit list in that murdering terrorist-chauvinist campaign led by the JVP in the 89-90 period in opposition to the Indo-Lanka Accord and the 13th Amendment. The JVP slit the knees of those who would dare to vote at the Provincial Council elections. Yet, soon, they would contest and take up position and privilege as members and ministers of the very same Provincial Councils. These are true facts recorded by history.

From the path of abortive insurrectionary armed struggle which had sacrificed two generations of misguided petit-bourgeois youth during 1971, and then once again in the 89-90 period, it changed colours again to become a trusted and loyal bourgeois parliamentary agent of the defunct, neo-colonial Capitalist State and its ruling class. How vile, pathetic and bankrupt, even for a sun scorched Lizard. No Lizard or any such species would ever sink to these depths of deception, duplicity and degeneration.

Then we were entertained by this circus lizard that bailed out the Chandrika government which had unseated the UNP in a constitutional coup in the form of the “Probationary Government”. They thought that they would wring Chandrika by the neck and come out on top as the one and only alternative Opposition. Chandrika thought it fit to align herself with the known murderers of her husband. That is the vile, foul and soulless nature of bourgeois politics in the Land of Lanka. Then, the Lizard would show its true colours. It would campaign for the electoral victory of Mahinda Rajapakse that brought him to power as the Executive President- all the while claiming that they were for the abolition of the Executive Presidency! Worming itself into the Mahinda Rajapakse Regime, it played its true role as the foremost ideological and political vanguard force in the State terrorist war of annihilation and liquidation against the LTTE, in defence of the chauvinist-fascist unitary Capitalist State. The JVP vehemently denied any status of nationhood to the Tamil Nation. They filed the motion in the Supreme Court that divided the North from the East and legally denied any notion of a traditional Tamil homeland. They sabotaged the P-Toms undercutting any possibility of a negotiated settlement. Following the end of the war, the JVP represented itself as the only true guardian of the Tamil people. Wow! That is why I say that this Lizard must be preserved for all posterity as a rare and genuine species of the mutant human political variety.

The JVP has graduated from being a petit-bourgeois opportunist class force replete with the most extremely putrid form of opportunism and chauvinism, to become a foremost vanguard Comprador-Capitalist agent of the Unitary, theocratic-fascist State. It gives pledges to their imperialist masters and local Compradors that they are better at serving their class interests that even the UNP or the SLFP. Their economic program recognises the role of the marauding compradors, the so-called private sector in functioning as the motor force of development and prosperity, within the imperialist-driven, neo-liberal paradigm. It pays homage and obeisance to the Maha Nayakes, forsaking any pledge to secularism.

No wonder it lost its bearings. Even the most astute and magnificently evolved Lizard would find the going rough and tough in this game of duplicity, deception and cunning betrayal. It maybe that there is a pigmentation issue here. The hapless Lizard has just run out of colours. Let’s just see how it will paint itself all over again in brilliant colours and baptise itself in the filth and foul of bourgeois politics. We all need just such circus entertainment to keep our cynical instincts alive in this the barren wasteland of humanity.

*Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe -Secretary: Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist)