The old left and the JVP become strange bedfellows
By Vishvanath
The first political marriage between the old left and the new left, represented by the JVP, occurred in 2004, when the then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, turned her SLFP-led People’s Alliance into the United People’s Freedom Front (UPFA), with the JVP, the CPSL and the LSSP as constituents. Chandrika wanted to wrest control of the parliament from the UNP at any cost to consolidate her position as the Head of State, and therefore was desperate to expand the vote base of her alliance. However, not all SLFP heavyweights were well disposed towards her move. Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was the then Opposition Leader, put up stiff resistance, claiming that the JVP was trying to put into action its founding leader Rohana Wijeweera’s strategy of infiltrating the SLFP, grabbing its leadership, and then moving on to defeat the UNP and capture state power. But Chandrika went ahead with her plan.
JVP’s first impressive electoral win
The UPFA won the 2004 snap general election, which was held after President Kumaratunga had sacked the UNP-led UNF government, purportedly to safeguard national security. As many as 41 out of about 55 candidates the JVP fielded on the UPFA ticket were returned, and the JVP let go of two of its National List seats for the SLFP to settle an internal dispute over the seat allocation. Current JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Vijitha Herath and Wimal Weerawansa, came first in Kurunegala, Gampaha and Colombo Districts. The JVP was represented in the Kumaratunga Cabinet with Dissanayake holding the agriculture portfolio.
Its impressive electoral performance in 2004 marked a turning point in the JVP’s political journey, and would influence its strategy in 2024. As a tit-for-tat response, the JVP asked President Kumaratunga not to appoint Rajapaksa Prime Minister. It wrote a strongly-worded letter to her, making that demand and threatening to pull out of the UPFA in case she ignored it. The JVP’s choice for the premiership was Lakshman Kadirgamar, who however had no prime ministerial ambitions. Chandrika disregarded the JVP’s objections and acted in accordance with the SLFP’s decision that Rajapaksa was the most eligible candidate for the post of PM. The JVP did not leave the UPFA over that, but voted with its feet one year later in protest against what it described as President Kumaratunga’s move to share tsunami relief with the LTTE through the Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure (PTOMS).
Another political marriage
Strangely, the JVP, which broke ranks with the UPFA, would make an about-turn the following year and lead Rajapaksa’s presidential election campaign from the front. Some of the old videos of the JVP leaders campaigning for Rajapaksa in the 2004 presidential race have resurfaced, and in one of them Vijitha Herath is seen promoting Rajapaksa’s election manifesto, the Mahinda Chinthanaya, as a silver bullet. The SLFP stopped short of throwing its weight behind Rajapaksa in the presidential race as he had fallen out with President Kumaratunga, who sought to queer the pitch for him. It was thanks to the JVP that Rajapaksa secured the presidency following a poll boycott the LTTE declared in the areas under its control in the North and the East, placing UNP candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe at a distinct disadvantage.
The JVP, as is its wont, fell out with President Rajapaksa, and turned hostile against his government. Its parliamentary group was sitting separately in the parliament. The UPFA government was extremely weak, and Rajapaksa had to engineer crossovers from the UNP to prop it up.
A fragile truce between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE came to an end in 2006, with the LTTE resuming hostilities against the armed forces. In 2007, the then Opposition planned to defeat the 2008 budget and bring down the Rajapaksa government. The UNP, the TNA and the JVP went all out to defeat the Rajapaksa government’s budget in November 2007. President Rajapaksa went to the UK a few days before the final vote was taken, and speculation was rife that the government would lose a majority in the House because some ruling party MPs had switched their allegiance to the UNP.
On being informed of the political situation here, President Rajapaksa decided to rush back home on the eve of the budget vote, but the national carrier, SriLankan, which was managed by Emirates at that time, refused to offload passengers to accommodate him and his entourage. Therefore, they had to return in a Mahin Air flight. The President made some frantic efforts to retain his government’s majority, and they yielded the intended results. Some of the UPFA MPs who had promised to join forces with the Opposition were persuaded to vote with the government, given the crucial stage the war had entered, and it was rumored that they had been given bigger bribes than what they had been offered by the other side. The JVP abstained when the vote was taken. Anura Bandaranaike crossed over to the Opposition on the day of the vote, giving the government a rude shock. The budget was passed with 114 votes to 67 in the 225-member House. The CPSL and the LSSP continued to back the UPFA steadfastly.
Fall of the JVP
The JVP became overconfident following its stunning performance in the 2004 general election, but did not manage its electoral gains properly. It suffered a debilitating split in 2008, with its Parliamentary Group leader and Propaganda Secretary and MP Wimal Weerawansa breaking away with a group of MPs and joining forces with the Rajapaksa government.
The Rajapaksa government succeeded in militarily neutralizing the LTTE in 2009, and shoring up its electoral prospects much to the detriment of the Opposition, especially the UNP and the JVP. The JVP was instrumental in fielding the war-winning Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka as the common Opposition candidate to challenge President Rajapaksa in the 2010 presidential election, but without success. Rajapaksa secured a second term, and in the general election that followed a few months later, the UPFA obtained 144 seats and it mustered a two-thirds majority with crossovers. The UNP could obtain only 60 seats. The ITAK/TNA won 14 seats. The JVP, which contested from the Democratic National Alliance, which fielded Fonseka in the presidential election, came a poor third with only 7 seats. In other words, the JVP lost more than 32 seats it had in the previous Parliament.
The traditional left, which threw in its lot with the SLFP, managed to retain their hold on power, and remain relevant in national politics, while the JVP was losing ground in national politics, and concentrating more on the trade union front, where it managed to consolidate its control at the expense of the trade unions affiliated to the traditional left. Critics of the leftists would jokingly say the JVP had ended up in the same boat as the traditional left.
JVP turns the tables on Rajapaksa
The UNP and the JVP were weakened and had no way of posing a formidable challenge to the UPFA with a two-thirds majority in the parliament after the 2010 defeat. But the UPFA failed to live up to the people’s expectations, which were extremely high, and allegations of corruption, abuse of power and waste abounded against that administration which ruined things for itself apace.
The defeat of President Rajapaksa in the 2015 presidential election, the victory of Maithirpala Sirisena, backed by the UNP and the JVP, and the formation of the UNP-led UNF government, gave a turbo boost to the JVP’s political project, and led to an alliance of strange bedfellows again. The UNP and the JVP joined forces. However, the JVP could obtain only 6 seats in the 2015 general election, where the UNP secured 106 seats and the UPFA 95 seats. The JVP-UNP honeymoon lasted until the 2019 presidential election, which Gotabaya Rajapaksa won representing the SLPP, enabling it to secure a two-thirds majority in the general election that followed in 2020. The JVP was left with only 3 seats, and the UNP could win only a single National List slot. The SJB, an offshoot of the UNP, secured 54 seats. (Next: Concluding Part—Economic Crisis, Aragalaya, 2024 electoral victories and the future of JVP and traditional left.)
