Batalanda Commission report: Making friends and enemies, the JVP way

By Vishvanath

Never a dull day in Sri Lanka! Issues crop up at such a pace that it is well-nigh impossible to keep track of them, much less tackle them, the latest being the ongoing hullabaloo over a 25-year-old presidential commission of inquiry report, recently retrieved from the limbo of forgotten things.
The Batalanda Commission, which inquired into ‘the establishment and maintenance of places of unlawful detention and torture chambers at the Batalanda housing scheme’, and its report are in the news again following an Al Jazeera interview with former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was questioned on some grave human rights violations during the JVP’s second uprising (1987-89), which ended in disaster. That head-to-head triggered a media feeding frenzy, prompting the JVP-led NPP government to table the Batalanda commission report in the parliament. The government was unaware that the report in question had already been tabled in the House during Chandrika Kumaratunga’s presidency and published as a sessional paper!
The Batalanda Commission report is being interpreted in different ways by different persons and parties to suit their political agendas. Not all political commentators seem to have read the report, which is far from earth-shattering. The parliament has allocated two nonconsecutive days for a debate on the report. It is scheduled to be debated on April 10 and on a day in May to be decided later. Only the naïve will expect anything to come of the debate. The battle lines are already drawn. All signs are that the debate will end up being yet another political battle, leaving the public none the wiser.
Much is being spoken about the grave human rights violations, torture chambers that were located at Batalanda, counterterrorism operations, the culpability of politicians and police and military personnel and the spate of JVP terror, in the late 1980s. However, something interesting that the commission has shed light on has gone undiscussed—the JVP’s backing for the UNP in the 1977 general election. This is of interest mainly because it shows how the JVP, like other political parties, has had neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, and it has been driven by political expediency more than anything else despite its much-avowed commitment to Marxism.
The JVP threw its weight behind the UNP in 1977, having gone all out to help the SLFP defeat a UNP government in the 1970 general election. Having come into being in the mid-1960s, claiming to be a revolutionary alternative to the traditional left, which had become mere appendages of the SLFP due to years of coalition politics, the JVP not only pledged its support for the SLFP-led United Front (UF) but also campaigned very hard to ensure that alliance’s victory in the 1970 general election. The UF secured a two-thirds majority. The reason the JVP gave for supporting the UF was that the UNP government of the day was a US puppet and the CIA was trying to keep it in power even if it lost the general election to be held. The JVP urged the people to give a supermajority to the UF to meet what it called the CIA threat head-on.
Soon after the UF’s spectacular win in 1970, the JVP started complaining that it was being given short-shrift and took up arms in a bid to topple that administration, which crushed that armed uprising, and incarcerated the JVP leaders. Thus, the JVP became a victim of a political force it helped create in 1970. About six years later, it chose to support the capitalist UNP, which, it said, was backed by the CIA! In the early 1980s, having carried out a sustained political attack on the SLFP, the JVP turned against the UNP, which proscribed it on the basis of trumped up charges, the main being that it was involved in the 1983 ethnic violence against Tamils. President J. R. Jayewardene’s government did so because the JVP had challenged the results of the heavily-rigged 1982 referendum legally.
The JVP staged its second uprising in 1987, when the Jayewardene government had to sign the Indo-Lanka Accord and introduce the 13th Amendment to create the Provincial Councils. Its spree of violence prompted the UNP government to respond by unleashing a wave of counterterrorism and going to the extent of employing brutal methods such as torture, abductions and extrajudicial killings to crush the insurrection. The JVP’s top leadership was decimated in 1989, and only Somawansa Amerasinghe managed to escape; he lived in exile and returned to Sri Lanka years later to reorganize the party.
In 1994, the JVP befriended the SLFP again, and refrained from contesting the presidential election held in that year to prevent a split in the anti-UNP vote and ensure then then Prime Minister Kumaratunga’s victory, thereby helping consolidate the victory of the SLFP-led People’s Alliance in that year’s general election. Ten years later, it opted for an electoral alliance with the SLFP, and secured 39 seats in the parliament by contesting from the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA). It pulled out of that administration the following year in protest against President Kumaratunga’s efforts to set up a mechanism to administer tsunami relief together with the LTTE.
Interestingly, after the UFPA’s victory in the 2004 general election, the JVP did everything in its power to prevent President Kumaratunga from appointing Mahinda Rajapaksa Prime Minister, but without success. The JVP requested Kumaratunga to appoint Lakshman Kadirgamar PM instead, as it hated Mahinda, who had sought to prevent the SLFP from coalescing with the JVP. However, the JVP made an about-turn and backed Mahinda in the 2005 presidential election. Perhaps, Mahinda would not have become President if not for the JVP’s campaign, for President Kumaratunga sought to settle political scores with him by queering the pitch for him in the presidential race.
In 2010, the JVP joined forces with the UNP again in a bid to defeat President Rajapaksa in that year’s presidential election. It backed a common presidential candidate fielded by the Opposition, former Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka, who lost. In 2015, it joined the UNP in defeating President Rajapaksa, paving the way for the elevation of Maithripala Sirisena to the executive presidency. It gained representation in the National Executive Council of the UNP-led UNF government and made a joint effort with that administration to eliminate corruption. It took on UNP leader Wickremesinghe only after he became Prime Minister and President in quick succession with the help of the SLPP in 2022.
Today, the JVP is all out to destroy Wickremesinghe politically with the help of the Batalanda Commission report. It has sought to outmaneuver the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), which is demanding the arrest of Wickremesinghe and others on the basis of the Batalanda Commission report. The FSP is bent on eating into the JVP’s support base. Interestingly, the JVP had no qualms about joining forces with Wickremesinghe to topple a government and embark on a joint crusade against corruption, despite the existence of Batalanda Commission during the past 25 years. For all political parties, expediency takes precedence over principles and ideologies. That is the name of the game in politics.