Can this ‘centrist path’ take JVP up there?
By N Sathiya Moorthy
Anti-JVP social media has not stopped haranguing party boss and presidential candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake, AKD for short, over his recent tour of the US. His visit was aimed at addressing Diaspora JVP supporters and sympathisers in that country, and was preceded by meetings with the US ambassador Julie Chung. It was followed by a meeting with Indian High Commissioner Gopal Baglay.
Critics feel that such actions on AKD’s part have put the JVP on the defensive. They seem to indicate that the US meetings and not-so-infrequent meetings with Amb Chung has compromised the party’s unqualified past opposition to ‘imperialist’ America from the days of JVP founder Rohana Wijeweera. Likewise, his willingness to hear out the larger Indian neighbour is also being related to the third of Rohana’s ‘Five Classes’, running down the ‘Indian hegemony’.
Successive leaders of the JVP, including AKD, have followed Rohana’s path on both issues, but a new beginning became visible with the Aragalaya protests last year. Ahead of the protests, the JVP leadership had met the US envoy. Even then tongues began wagging but the nation’s pre-occupation with the Aragalaya protests crowded out the noise at the time.
The question is if the JVP is moving away from the basic tenets of the party founder? The answer is yes-and-no. Yes, because, these are not Rohana’s days and AKD is leading a new-generation party going by the old name. Two, the JVP began moving away from Rohana Wijeweera’s ‘Marxist-Leninists’ methods soon after the Sri Lankan literally crushed the Second Insurgency (1987-89) and took to the democratic path.
Violent behaviour
If anything, from the nineties till the Aragalaya protests, no one in the country or outside has cited one instance to attribute Marxist-Leninist kind of violent political behaviour to the party, from the days of the forgotten past leader, the late Somawansa Amarasinghe, who died an unsung death in 2016. In the midst of the Aragalaya protests, some social media posts claimed that the JVP alongside (and not along with) the breakaway Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) of one-time Australian citizen, Premakumar Gunaratnam was behind some of the ugly scenes that were witnessed at Aragalaya. But those charges have not stuck.
The post-Aragalaya Government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe too has not thus far named either the JVP or even the FSP, which is considered more radical and militant of the two. If anything, Government investigators have named any political party or organisation for all the violent acts that went by the name of Aragalaya, leading to the early groups of urban Colombo protestors withdrawing from the scene, many of them literally so.
That was also because this was not the kind of JVP the present generation has come to see, if not identify with. To Kumar Gunaratnam and the FSP are simply non-existent in their political bibliography. What they do not know, thus, does not exist.
Thus one year after Aragayala, JVP’s AKD is not only the first one to throw his cap into the presidential race next year. He is also believed to be the most popular face in the race, going by a private opinion poll that has been tracking the ‘mood of the nation’ almost every quarter since the as sudden end of Aragalaya as it had begun.
If earlier, AKD’s US visit and allegations about the blunting of the JVP’s ideological edge, if it was any, is being accompanied by social media posts attacking the private pollster as a ‘CIA funded’ agency. This is when none of AKD’s political challengers for next year, including incumbent Wickremesinghe, has challenged the findings, unless they all have calculatedly ignored the ‘public mood’, as reportedly found.
The question arises if the JVP is moving away from the left-extreme to a more centrist position in terms of foreign and economic policies, not necessarily in that order. If so, will the centrist policy-changes help the party bag the presidency for the first time next year? Or, at least help the JVP become the decisive factor after the parliamentary polls the year after?
All in a day’s work
For once, the JVP is not protesting when criticized for moving away from the left-extreme. Visualising themselves as the ‘government-in-waiting’, the party leadership has not shied away from declaring that if elected to power, they would not hesitate to talk to the IMF, once among those most despised enemy, as the present and past governments have been doing in their times.
In the current circumstances in which the nation finds itself, the JVP’s new-found approach to matters IMF is the most pragmatic way to doing things. Assuming that the party expects to be in power next year, it jolly well deals with the IMF, among others. It however remains to be seen who between the Government and the IMF blinks then, as the incumbent leadership is seen as doing nothing but blinking – and purportedly for justifiable reasons.
The same should apply to the JVP’s approach to India, the US and the rest of the world, where China would still remain in their mind – and more so in the minds of those critics of the party. Even without it all, since before the Aragalaya protests, the JVP was seen as being less critical of India, for instance, over the energy projects in the East, compared to some of President Gotabya’s ministers, who all had to go.
It was curious to note that among the critics of India at the time were Wimal Weerawansa, who was once the up and coming leader of the JVP, and thus professed centre-left ideology, Vasudeva Nanayakara, the old left, whose genre has already faded away, and Udaya Gammanpilla from the centre-right. A curious concoction, did you say?
Counting the chickens
Granting that AKD is as popular as he is believed to be, can it all help him become the President next year? Even the best of poll results, which is now history, gave him close to 10 per cent below the mandated half-way mark to win the presidency in a popular election. That figure has only sunk since.
Does it mean that Kumara Dissanayake would still come on the top of the heap, which, given the current indications, is going to be crowded? Can he then make it on the strength of the first-preference vote? If not, will he get enough number of second-preference votes to make it?
These may sound too early to answer but then this is when political parties and aspiring candidates, including independents, begin doing their back-of-the envelope calculations. Early to the race, the JVP may have even done its booth-wise calculations, or so is a belief.
Historically, when contesting alone, the JVP’s vote-share has hovered only around five per cent at the best. In the company of the unified SLFP, it had crossed the double-digit mark but not when without it. The rest of the alliance partners now bring no votes to the party or the combine.
If and how can this figure multiply ten times, if not more, for catapulting AKD onto the seat of power? After all, the party has gathered more crowds on Colombo’s Galle Face Green for its election rallies, but not as much votes in the ballot boxes.
There is then the crucial question, if a chunk of the traditional five-per cent voters move away if the JVP is seen as taking an unacceptable centrist path unfamiliar to them. After all, the cadre-based party with an un-refutable presence in trade and university unions in the majority Sinhala South cannot afford to lose them, nor be able to replace them.
That takes you to the next question: Can the JVP work with the FSP, or will the latter be able to slice away some of those committed cadres, who feel estranged, if not cheated by the party leadership? If so, will the FSP be tempted to contest the presidential election? Having declared that it is more Marxist-Leninist than the JVP, in thought, word and action will the FSP then field a presidential candidate of its own? If so, how can the JVP counter and neutralise it?
How would it then impact the JVP’s standing and hopes of making it to the nation’s presidency? After all, the traditional parties and leaderships, more well-versed in the art of fighting and winning elections, and are also more spread-out than the JVP to be able to doing so, cannot deny space to a rank outsider, who was always an also-ran at best when contesting alone?
There is another side to it all. If the so-called mass popularity of AKD is built upon his views and methods, would the JVP now taking a centrist position and posture as the rest of them all, make these very same voters conclude that they are only one of them, and is not anyway different from the rest…or, the most opportunists of them all, who have hidden their true colours all through and cheated them, too?
But there is one last question: If the JVP is not going to be able to woo the single largest constituency of centrist voters, even if only half of them – but not less – where is AKD and the JVP going to get their votes from, more in the first round than in the second, that is?
Is the JVP counting the chickens before the eggs are hatched?
(The writer is a Policy Analyst & Political Commentator, based in Chennai, India. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)
