An Open Missive To AKD & NPP
By Vishwamithra –
“Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.” ~ Erol Ozon
Dear Sir,
I have been meaning to write this missive to you for some time. However, due to changing sociopolitical circumstances and varying demands on my personal time, I had to readjust my own priorities. Yet, it dawned on me a couple of days ago that now is the time to pen some of my thoughts on the current sociopolitical flow of events that have captured the hearts and minds of the masses. That continuing cascade of events has influenced not only the very premise of our national conversation, it has gone further than one had time to digest the compelling reasons and intellectual curiosities those events have entailed to a great extent.
One such a significant moment arrived on May 1, 2024. The whole country, more or less, pretended to celebrate the Worker’s Day. May Day is not meant to be a day on which our political parties summon their supporters to mass rallies and show the world that they are stronger than the other party’s prowess. But the days that May Day was celebrated as one dedicated to the working men and women are gone forever. Such sublimity is a thing of the past. With advancing years and declining of real values of labor and devotion to work being set aside as a secondary measure, modern Sri Lanka has adopted this carnival-type celebrations in order to galvanize their grassroots on the one hand and self-assess their on strengths and weaknesses on the other. Nevertheless, introspection is not a sign of our political leaders and it has never been so either.
National Political Power (NPP) overperformed this time; holding massive rallies, one in the Deep South, Matara, another in the Capital of the country, Colombo and the other in the ancient ‘Raja-Rata’ (North Central Province), Anuradhapura, one not second to the other in mass attendance, is no mean task. But this is only the beginning; not the end in itself. The old JVP too was successful in attracting tens of thousands to their major public meetings, but when the votes were counted after an election, the math did not do justice to the efforts and seemingly magical aura of the Party. If any political party which needs introspection today, it is the NPP.
A quotation by Vladimir Lenin would be apt at this moment: ‘All my life and my strength were given to the first cause in the world- the liberation of mankind’. One might wonder how such noble words and all-encompassing thought could be ascribed to Lenin, the one who most ruthlessly launched the massive agriculture collectivization program in the then Soviet Union which ultimately produced one of the most unmerciful leaders of the twentieth century in Joseph Stalin and no grain harvest to show. What is eventually true is, when leaders utter uncommonly kind and inspiring words, after coming to power, in order to implement the policies that were pronounced as Utopian and just and fair for the common working men and women, their very doggedness to a school of ideology would ultimately destroy not only the leader who chose to say them loudly, but also the societal surroundings that he was part and parcel of.
The Gulag Archipelago as described by Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the untold crimes and unspeakable suffering the common men and women had to endure during the Stalin-ear are undeniable recorded history today. But allegiance to a seemingly noble but practically inhumane ideological pronunciations can annihilate generations of thinking and generations of living men and women. That is the optics Anura Kumara Dissanayake and NPP would have to battle with when taken in a current macro context. That is the prism through which Ranil, Sajith and their cohorts would want the general public to evaluate the NPP.
The core of the opposition to the NPP will emanate from the above described quarters; the fundamental premise in which the NPP is placed by the public at large consists of such an adversarial quality. How can you and your Party handle such a strong and relentless attack from your opponents? That is the basic question you have to answer and without any mercy. Lionel Bopage, one time General Secretary of the old JVP on his way out, wrote a letter to the then Central Committee of the Party. In a profoundly illuminating rendering of heartfelt ideas and ideals, Bopage illustrated not only his own frustrations and disillusionment with JVP, he also left a remarkable legacy of honesty and truthfulness in that historic missive.
Do not leave room for a repetition of such a monumental blunder on your party. The euphoria after three unprecedentedly massive May Day rallies is not the answer. An honest and profound understanding of the sociopolitical history of your own Party, emerging prowess of your opponents coupled with mathematical unlikelihood of a massive NPP-victory should be able to open your eyes and ears. An NPP victory at the forthcoming Presidential Elections may very well be possible; but for that possibility to be realistic, a fundamental change, one as that you claim to bring about in the country by being elected to power, must take place.
Your statements on the negatives of regimes of yesteryear have been very illuminating. Your steadfast defense of a mixed approach to the ills of the current economic crisis is highly commendable. Your pledges to bring before the arms of the law of all those who pilfered our national treasury and the priceless resources are well received by a great majority of our people. But such criticisms and obvious election promises alone would not be sufficient to ensure a self-activating victory at the polling booth, come election day.
In other words, all what I have penned above is the substance of the context that we are discussing here. That substance, I cannot alter. I can’t do anything about that substance. But that does not disqualify me from putting my two cents worth about the process. In every election campaign, there are two streams that need to correlate to each other without a murmur of discord. One is substance and the other process. Substance spells out what is necessary to impart into the minds of the electorate. Process tells you how to impart that substance. The NPP has to enwrap themselves with a process of delivery; that process has to be near-perfect, if not perfect. In order to sharpen that process and deliver a consummate message of promise, of optimism, of expectancy and of real relief, you have to launch a methodology by which your desired goals are met.
Digital age
We are living in a digital age. Everything that is happening around us can be transmitted wherever we want it to be in seconds. Make use of that technology. When your organizers go around the households in a particular hamlet, make available to them this digital technology to deliver a real-time position of the electorate. Without depending on various pseudo-pollsters, get them to get across the real-time statistics and figures to a district command center located in an undisclosed locality in each district.
Appoint a point man or woman for each Grama Niladhari (GN) division. There are just over 14,000 in total (including the Northern and Eastern provinces). You may have already done this, but make sure that this process is refined and fine-tuned to the brim! Ask the GN leaders to report to the district leaders and from the District Leaders to the Central Command, once again at an undisclosed location. On paper it looks so simple and easy. But make no mistake, it’s hard, it’s tiresome to do it day in and day out; it takes a lot of focusing; it demands tough and instant decision-making.
Thinkers and Tinkers
Relieve the politicians of day to day implementation of tactics. Your team of strategists must be the topmost leadership consisting of no more than three (3) to five (5) persons, maybe four (4) politicians and one or two non-politicians. The significance of inclusion of non-politicians is that such men and women would be freer to talk their hearts and minds out, with no vested interests. At the same time the front-team that comes before the press and media should consist of supremely qualified media specialists who have the ability to navigate a stormy press conference of a media confrontation. While this strategic team can engage in strategic thinking, there must be room and space for a team of ‘Tinkers’ who would exercise tactical implementation of the major strategy. That team of Tinkers must have a fair amount of freedom to react and respond to crises that emerge more often than normal during an election campaign. Should you have this plan afoot now, it would be much more amenable to be implemented as and when the top leadership decides.
However, the main thrust of the total campaign program is to free the candidate or candidates in the event of Parliamentary elections so that they could be focusing, one hundred percent, on the people they meet, the masses and other interested parties and groups. Organization, organization and organization are the three most crucial pillars of any winning strategy. One cannot dispute that, period. Burden on you could be unbearably heavy, but don’t let it warp your knees. Scorn hurled at you may exceed decent levels, but face it with equanimity. Victory is not cheap.
As a student of current affairs and as a regular writer, I have been following the ups and downs of the JVP movement in the country. One cannot ignore the emergence of the NPP as a formidable people’s force, especially during the last three years, particularly in the wake of the Aragalaya-22. Whether that force has turned into a movement which ultimately can produce the desired results of your leadership is still before the jury, so to speak. This missive is not a critique; nor is it a flattery. It’s an attempt to follow your journey.
*The writer can be contacted at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com
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