JVP vs. JVP

By Vishvanath

The JVP-led NPP government is coming under increasing pressure to practice what it preached while in the opposition and present to the parliament all seven MoUs it signed with India during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent Sri Lanka visit. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa is leading the ongoing campaign to ratchet up pressure on the government to make the MoUs public and submit them to parliamentary Sectoral Committees without further delay. Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath has gone on record as saying that he will consult other Cabinet colleagues on the matter and respond to the Opposition’s request in due course.

The JVP/NPP finds itself in an unenviable position. Having campaigned against what it described as Indian expansionism and taken up arms purportedly to defend Sri Lanka, it is now trying to unsay what it said about India for several decades, and defend its MoUs with India, especially the one on defense cooperation. What it is doing to be in the good books of India and to enlist the latter’s support to strengthen its hold on power is exactly the opposite of what it asked previous governments to do.

Unlike in the past when one had to take the trouble of retrieving archival material painstakingly by going through stacks of old newspapers and/or audio and video recordings, today, information is available at one’s fingertips. The digital realm is full of speeches the JVP leaders made during their opposition days, castigating India and asking previous dispensations not to enter into any defense agreements with India. The Opposition is making the most of them to embarrass the government.

Former Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne, addressing the media on Tuesday, played a video clip of a speech Anura Kumara Dissanayake had made as an Opposition MP. Dissanayake is heard saying that India is demanding the East Terminal of the Colombo Port, the Mattala Airport, and trying to build a power plant in Sampur. The US and India were behind bringing that government to power, Dissanayake says, challenging the leaders of that government to a debate. Powerful nations are trying to force agreements on Sri Lanka to grab its natural resources and, therefore, the latter must under no circumstances enter into defense pacts that are inimical to its interests, he says. After playing the video on his mobile phone, Dr. Senaratne said President Anura Kumara Dissanayake was contradicting MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake. “Dissanayake should have a debate with himself,” he said smilingly, driving his point home effectively.

Former JVP Propaganda Secretary and parliamentary group leader, Wimal Weerawansa, who leads the National Freedom Front, another JVP offshoot, also held a media briefing on Tuesday and called upon the government to reveal the contents of the MoUs it had signed with India to the public. Dismissing President Dissanayake’s claim that they were beneficial to Sri Lanka, Weerawansa said that if so, there was no reason why the NPP should keep them under wraps. The Opposition raised questions about the MoUs at issue, in the parliament. Some of its MPs, including Dayasiri Jayasekera, said the law required those MoUs to be passed by the parliament with a special majority. The government disagreed with them, claiming that there was no such legal requirement, and the constitutional provisions the Opposition was referring to did not apply to the MoUs under discussion. However, it will be politically counterproductive for the NPP to keep the MoUs from the public, any longer, with the local government elections drawing near. The JVP/NPP used to castigate the previous government for not upholding transparency as regards its agreements with the IMF, etc.

What the JVP’s about-turns signify is that the Marxist outfit is undergoing the pangs of democratic transformation. It has had to adapt to the new political reality as the party in power and make use of its fortuitous rise to power to consolidate itself in national politics. This is a balancing act that has to be performed adroitly if the JVP is not to face the same fate as the traditional left, which has become a political hitchhiker, in a manner of speaking, due to its prolonged stay in coalition politics as a partner of the SLFP and compromising its Marxist principles. The JVP used the NPP with a liberal outlook, as a vehicle to achieve its political goal, but now it finds itself in a dilemma, having to be socialist and liberal at the same time. If it abandons its Marxist ideology, it will alienate its cadres, and if it doesn’t it will lose international recognition and drive away investors.

Pragmatism plays a key role in electoral politics, where competing interests have to be navigated skillfully to achieve desired outcomes, and it often requires compromise, flexibility and even policy about-turns. Ideological rigidity stands in the way of a political party’s efforts to gain popular support, expand its support base and win elections. This has been the experience of the ruling coalition, whose biggest constituent, the JVP, represents doctrinal intransigence to some extent, as a Marxist outfit, and the NPP upholds pragmatism, which made last year’s regime change possible by attracting the voters who would otherwise have not backed the JVP.

Political pragmatism usually pays in electoral politics, but it could prove problematic to ideologically driven, cadre-based political outfits espousing revolutionary causes, for its transition to a mass-based political entity with an appeal to a broader section of the electorate has a mellowing effect on its core ideology and tends to alienate its old guard. The situation could become more serious for such a political organization undergoing transformation when its breakaway groups espousing its original ideology exert a pull on its revolutionary core. The JVP finds itself in this kind of predicament; it has had to embrace change to retain popular support, but its off-shoot, the Frontline Socialist Party is capitalizing on the JVP’s political transition to win over its progenitor’s rank and file by championing their shared revolutionary ideology more effectively.

India’s backing usually goes a long way towards ensuring the stability of any Sri Lankan government. It was India’s financial assistance that helped the SLPP administration manage the economic crisis and stay in power until the 2024 presidential election. So, the JVP-led NPP will benefit from its MoUs with India, but it will also have problems to contend with in domestic politics vis-à-vis the Opposition’s effective propaganda campaign.