By Dayan Jayatilleka –

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

The JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) used rude language in Parliament to criticize the No Confidence Motion moved by the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB). He called it “stupid, moronic”.

Curiously he and UNP leader Wickremesinghe seemed to share a similarly negative view of the No Confidence Motion. Ranil thought that the NCM qualifies the Opposition to belong in the Guinness book of records.

AKD’s remarks and their timing weren’t exactly a model of political wisdom and intellect.

Firstly, one would have thought that any attack by the SJB on the government, however amateurish one thought it was, would be a positive thing. After all, in his famous ‘Message to the Tricontinental’ Che Guevara commended “battles won or lost—but fought—against the enemy”.

The leader of a party that led two unsuccessful uprisings should know better than to judge a battle simply by its immediate outcome and its strengthening of the enemy.

Secondly, the timing of AKD’s crude sideswipe was atrocious. A major battle has commenced and is about to move to the next level with the presentation of the KDU bill in Parliament in the first week of August.

That battle is being waged against an enemy that is qualitatively different from any that the JVP has ever faced. Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his closest associates aren’t planters and volunteer army officers like Gen Ranjan Wijeratne or Oxford-educated hawks like Lalith Athulathmudali.    

This battle therefore needs a broader front of alliances, partnerships and blocs than ever before in Sri Lanka’s history since 1947. Insulting the country’s largest Opposition party isn’t perhaps the best way to built a broad united action front or to secure covering fire in parliament. Rather, it is “moronic”.

AKD’s sectarianism is not limited to the SJB and its recent no-confidence motion. Given the stakes in the coming confrontation over the KDU bill, AKD should be ready to appear on the same stage as his counterpart Kumar Gunaratnam, leader of the FSP. If the JVP and FSP leaders appear on the same stage and address the crowds, it would give a huge boost to the Movement. However, AKD remains the guy who said on TV that there was never a JVP member, let alone leading personality (who by the way worked hard, clandestinely, to rebuild the party) known as Kumar Gunaratnam. Kumar Gunaratnam’s older brother Ranjithan, who was eliminated by the state, was one of the JVP’s hero martyrs.   

Thirdly, AKD’s situation is both absurd and hypocritical. He purports to lecture the SJB on political stupidity. Under AKD’s leadership, the JVP which had 40 seats in 2004 has dropped to 3 in 2020. He is also a leader under whom the JVP’s vote-share dropped to 3%. If the SLPP rolls back the low cut-off point that President Premadasa instituted and restores the original cut-off point that JRJ imposed, AKD’s party would be in dire straits.

Fourthly, AKD is attempting to talk down from a lofty height to a party which has achieved much more than his. Rohana Wijeweera had the ambition—as announced in his two master classes which he took around the country, about the fate of the LSSP and the SLFP- to become the main left party (which it is) and then the main opposition party. Having existed for 55 years it has failed to achieve the latter status.

By stark contrast, Sajith Premadasa’s SJB did so shortly after its formation. In the first general election it faced it obtained more seats and a higher percentage of votes than SWRD Bandaranaike’s SLFP obtained at its first general election in 1952. It achieved the status of the biggest Opposition party in a few months; a status the JVP long aspired to. This was Sajith Premadasa’s achievement, coming on the heels of his ability to score 42% of the vote against Gotabaya Rajapaksa at the 2019 Presidential election. It is amusing when he and his party are given lectures on political unwisdom from someone who reduced his party from 40 seats to 3.

While Sajith has been able to secure the leadership of the Opposition by making his party the largest in the Opposition space, the zenith of AKD’s achievement has been to knock Ranil Wickremesinghe’s dead UNP into fourth place and gain the third spot (and 3% of the vote).

Fifthly, a glance around the world will show that however dramatic the protests and upheavals, the endgame is either electoral-democratic or a military coup perhaps in electoral form.

The Arab Spring and its Egyptian outcome provide one example of the latter. Latin America provides the better example, of the former.

It would take the wildest leap of the imagination and the widest deviation from reason, to assume that a candidate who obtained 42% on the deep downswing, and a party that is the main opposition formation, can be outpolled by anyone from a party that cannot get into double digits.

A little modesty is in order therefore, from AKD; not an outburst of misplaced arrogance.

I was there, watching and listening, the last time the JVP, on a high, was dismissive of a Premadasa. It was at Nugegoda in June-July 1989. The event was a well-attended JVP rally by the roadside, which went on into night. President Ranasinghe Premadasa had released over a thousand JVP detainees, declared a unilateral ceasefire, invited the JVP to re-enter the democratic electoral process, offered it three portfolios- and the JVP had spurned it all, returning to violence. By mid-year Premadasa invited all parties to attend a Roundtable. Advised by Anton Balasingham and Gopalaswamy Mahendrarajah (‘Mahattaya’), the LTTE agreed and participated for tactical reasons, to gain time and space.

At the Nugegoda rally, the JVP declared it was not the LTTE and would not bend, and announced that it would fight on till victory. That was June or July 1989. In six months, the party that AKD now leads, had learned a lesson about being “politically stupid, moronic”.

He should not repeat the mistake of talking down to another Premadasa; especially not the only son of the Premadasa that AKD’s predecessors thought themselves superior to.