By Vishvanath
Speculation was rife in the wake of the JVP-led NPP’s mammoth victory in last year’s general election that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) might hand over the leadership of the JVP to someone else and continue to lead the NPP. The JVP remained noncommittal about that rumor. Such speculation may have come about because it was the NPP alliance—and not its main constituent, the JVP—which had attracted as many as 6.8 million votes (61%).
The JVP had scored a stunning electoral victory previously. It succeeded in securing as many as 39 seats in the 2004 general election, which it contested as a constituent of the SLFP-led United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) under President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s leadership. Its leader, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Vijitha Herath and Wimal Weerawansa, topped the lists of preferential votes in the districts of Kurunegala, Gampaha and Colombo, respectively. Thus, it became clear that the JVP could improve its electoral performance when it coalesced with others. That may have led the JVP to form the NPP in 2019 to rally popular support as it had one in 2004.
In 2004, the JVP stood to gain from people’s resentment at the UNP-led UNF government, which was accused of having endangered national security by signing a ceasefire agreement with the LTTE, and giving the latter numerous concessions at the expense of the military. In 2024, it benefited from a massive wave of public anger at the SLPP and the UNP amidst the country’s worst ever economic crisis. It also effectively turned public opinion against all other Opposition parties by lumping them together and branding them as corrupt political entities and offering to cleanse national politics.
Coalition politics, which has become the order of the day due to the Proportional Representation system, takes its toll on the identities of political parties and their support bases, as has been the experience of the UNP, the SLFP, the SLPP and the traditional leftist parties. This may be the reason why the JVP has begun to assert itself in the NPP government, whose policies are antithetical to the JVP’s Marxist principles. It is swing voters who have made the NPP’s huge electoral victory possible in November 2024. They had previously supported other political leaders. It threw its weight behind Maithripala Sirisena in 2015, enabling him to win the presidency and thereby paved way for the formation of the UNP-led Yahapalana government. In 2019, they backed Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who won the presidency, and the SLPP the following year, helping it secure a two-thirds majority in Parliament. So, there is no guarantee that the swing voters will continue to back the NPP indefinitely.
The results of the May 06 local government elections may have served as a wake-up call for the JVP leaders. The NPP’s vote share plummeted from 6.8 million (61%) in November 2024 to 4.5 million (43%). Although the NPP emerged the overall winner by securing 266 councils, the majority of them are hung, and it has had to swallow its pride and make overtures to its political opponents in a bid to seize control of those local government institutions including the Colombo Municipal Council. This turn of events may have prompted the JVP to go all out to reinforce its support base vis-à-vis a decline in the NPP’s vote share within six months or so.
The JVP held its 60th anniversary on a grand scale on May 14 under the aegis of President Dissanayake, having turned the government’s May Day rally into an NPP event to all intents and purposes, without the JVP’s trademark display of the portraits of Marx and Lenin.
President Dissanayake made a fiery speech in Colombo on May 14 to boost the morel of the JVP cadres, and unwittingly revealed the dialectical tensions between the NPP and the JVP. He said some people may not want him to dwell on the JVP’s past, but he had to do so and there were many other who wanted to close that chapter and forge ahead. This has been viewed in some quarters as a swipe at the non-JVP members of the NPP, who dissociate themselves from the JVP because of its Marxist outlook and violent past. In saying so, the President sought to convince the JVP’s rank and file that he would never subjugate the JVP’s identity to the interests of the NPP. He cannot be unaware that he will be left with only the JVP in the event of the swing voters abandoning the NPP and opting to back some other political party in future elections. One may recall that the NPP could win only three seats in the 2020 general election, and the SLPP, which won 145 seats on its own and went on to secure a two-thirds majority by engineering crossover, was reduced to three seats in last year’s parliamentary election. Politics is like a game of snakes and ladders.
AKD is apparently in a dilemma. He is torn between the JVP and the NPP. It is generally believed that the JVP is the NPP and the NPP is the JVP, but they represent two different ideologies and constituencies. The JVP is the backbone of the incumbent government, but it is the non-JVP allies of the NPP that have an appeal to the public and can mobilize votes in large numbers, especially those of the middle-class people in the urban areas, where the government fared better than elsewhere in the recent LG polls. Some prominent NPP members have reportedly said that they do not subscribe to the JVP’s ideology.
The biggest challenge before AKD is to prevent the alienation of JVP cadres, reconcile the dialectical differences between the JVP and the NPP, and navigate the issues being thrown up by the rise of nationalistic forces, which compelled him to reverse his decision to skip the National Heroes’ Day commemoration on May 19, and attend the event. In the North and the East as well, the traditional Tamil and Muslim parties, such as the ITAK and the SLMC, respectively, are recovering lost ground, as evident from the LG polls results; the NPP has failed to retain the votes it polled in last year’s general election in those parts of the country. Whether AKD is up to the task of maintaining the unity and stability of the fissiparous ruling coalition with a shifting support base, and retaining popular support and the NPP’s hold on power by fulfilling what was promised to the public remains to be seen.
