By Dayan Jayatilleka –

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

Dr. Siri Gamage has taken exception to my classification of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the JVP-NPP’s trajectory as a shift to the right, and my classification of them as neo-Menshevik, by which I obviously make reference to the most famous Right in the history of the Left. He says my argumentation is ideological and represents an outdated ideological view at that.

It is not ideological. It is a classification. It is a classification based on Anura and the NPP’s practice. By practice I mean its stance and actions in the important domain of policy and policy decisions.

Decision and its implementation constitute the most crucial of actions because it reflects character. By character I do not mean only moral-ethical character, but political and socioeconomic (class) character.

My classification of the turn of the AKD administration as being a shift to the Right and the occupation of a position which belongs to the right, is analytical, not ideological—and in some corporate and neoliberal quarters would be considered positive, a compliment to the new government.

I intended it as a critique, but a critique which was based on its actions, not one in which the conclusion is reached by imposing some external ideological criteria.  I have also brought to bear an analysis of AKD’s discourse, accompanying his policy actions.    

I have done this, not focusing on minor or secondary issues but the primary ones.

Firstly, the Debt Trap. Any one or any administration may fail to improve a situation in inherits and has consistently criticized, but at least it must TRY to do so, before it surrenders.

AKD and the NPP had a sharp, consistent criticism of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s policy on debt—his responsibility for mounting indebtedness and his anti-austerity measures and strategy of economic contraction in the matter of debt management. Anura having become President, and the NPP having become the Government, did not even try to implement their own manifesto and mandate as regards the debt crisis and instead, explicitly signed-off on Ranil’s Debt deal which they had excoriated. Anura actually praised Ranil (“the political leadership” of “two years”) in his official remarks afterwards.   

Is or isn’t Ranil to the Right of AKD and the NPP’s earlier stated stance? Isn’t his macroeconomic policy and especially his policy on debt restructuring one of economic neoliberalism? Is or isn’t that a rightwing economic ideology? Then isn’t Anura and the NPP’s prompt adoption of his policy—without even trying a revisionist or reformist adjustment—a shift to the Right?

Is it leftwing, rightwing, center-left or centrist to sign a debt deal that hugely benefits the foreign and local bondholders? Is it rightwing or leftwing to do so without convening an all-parties roundtable and seeking consensus or bringing it to Parliament beforehand and seeking cross-party endorsement? Isn’t unilateralism in the service of a lopsided debt deal, a characteristically rightwing move?

Secondly, the interlinked issue of national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, economic dependence and subalternity.

The Left and Center-Left attempts to reduce dependence and to safeguard national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. The neoliberal Right doesn’t give a damn about these.

Apart from selling out to the major western asset management firms in the ISB deal, why is Anura expanding the Indian footprint in the North-East and the Chinese footprint in the South, thereby eroding our sovereignty and reinforcing our dependence, in a manner that no previous administration (most of them ‘centrist’) did—and going 180 degrees in the opposite direction of what he preached for decades right up to a few months ago, against external economic encroachments?

Were Anura, the JVP and the NPP leftwing then– and if so, what is AKD-NPP’s diametrically opposite policy practice and direction now, except rightwing?

Left, Right

Dr. Gamage attempts to abolish the distinctions of Right and Left as outdated. He should re-read Norberto Bobbio who combated this pernicious ideological attempt and proposed a diagrammatic representation of political-ideological positions. He wrote the landmark book ‘Right and Left: The Significance of a Political Distinction’ (1994) in order to combat the post-Cold War propaganda by the newly hegemonic ideology to say such distinctions were outdated and irrelevant.

They are not. Even in the USA today, mainstream scholarship and quality journalism discuss American politics using such categories.

Of course, it is not only ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ that matter. It is also the Center and its variations Center-Left and Center-Right.

Dr. Gamage should read a brilliant disquisition by Kusum Wijetilleke, a young researcher on the current political situation and choices in Sri Lanka, using these categories and leaning on the latest in Western especially American political and economic thinking. 

In Sri Lanka today the Center is unprecedentedly weak. The JVP-NPP having occupied the Center-Left space as an Opposition Movement, have abandoned both left and center and shifted or (more charitably) tilted Right as an administration. At the moment there is no one to fill the center-Left space. Even the ‘Center-Right’ is unfilled because of the confusion within the SJB whether it is ‘progressive centrist’, ‘center-right’, or simply ‘Right’.   

Examples of Rightwing Pivots

There are those who may think that my contention of a rapid rightward pivot by a leftwing or left-populist leader and movement, is unrealistic and lacks credibility. Those who may think so have a poor knowledge of history, both recent and of a century ago.

Greece’s rightward pivot by Prime Minister Tsipras and his Syriza Government, going against the mandate of a Referendum which they won just hours before on the debt issue, has been the subject of a famous book and many expositions by Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister who resigned his portfolio over the treachery. The pathetic fate of Syriza should tell the NPP-JVP where it is headed.   

More historic and ‘classic’, is the case of the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kaishek—who was defeated by Mao in the Chinese Revolution, fled to Taiwan and colonized it (calling it the ‘Republic of China’). Chiang turned on his Communist allies and massacred them in Shanghai and Canton (immortalized in Andre Malraux’s Man’s Fate) having abandoned his left-tinged nationalism pivoted into an alliance with the foreign financial and business interests who had enclaves in China’s coastal cities. That was in 1927. But just the year before, in 1926, Chiang’s Kuomintang, which under his illustrious predecessor Sun Yat Sen had been militarily supported by Lenin, was still an Honorary member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) and an ally of the USSR.

Anura Dissanayake is somewhere between Tsipras and Chiang. The NPP-JVP is somewhere between Syriza and the Kuomintang.

Sirima and Anura

To conclude, there is one matter on which Dr. Gamage and I might agree. He reassures us that the Anura-Led NPP is not at all like the Sirimavo-led united front government in which the left was an ally or partner, not the main player.

It may be indeed the case that I have underestimated the difference between Sirimavo’s 1970-1977 United Front Government and Anura’s NPP Government.

The NPP has so far lost nine (9) of the fourteen (14) elections held to Multi-Purpose Cooperative Societies (MPCS) in the most diverse parts of the island. Sirimavo’s UF Government didn’t get unpopular so fast. Nor did any other Government before this. Anura is moving downhill faster than Sirima.

*Dr Dayan Jayatilleka is the author of ‘The Twin Legacies of Lenin and Fidel’.