IS JVP A POLITICAL PARTY THAT DEVIATED FROM THE TRADITIONAL LEFT POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT ORIENTED?
Posted on September 28th, 2020

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

It is amorphous what the objectives of traditional left political parties when they were established in Sri Lanka? People of Sri Lanka had been adapted to feudalism in politics and administration since Kalinga rule, and generally, they did not prefer a revolutionist administration that turns the country to upside down.  Many historians view that the leftist politics in Sri Lanka, which began in the 1930s was only a small weave of a revolution that represented less than 0.01% of the population. Many views the weave of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 had not been able to influence Sri Lanka because the country consisted of more than 70% of people who were farmers and did not expect radical changes.

The concept of revolution of JVP was a result of provocative speeches of JVP leaders than a genuine expectation of people since the 1971s and the movement has declined now rock bottom in 2020 reflecting the actual nature of the movement and expectation of people.   The potential outcomes of left politics in Sri Lanka that were commenced by a foreign-educated handful of people the movement mirrors the true nature now. When looks at the strategies followed by them, it can assume that they did not want to capture the political power of the country and implement the dreamed economic policies to bring liberation to proletarians.

Left political parties including LSSP. CP, and others, JVP too since the inception demonstrated that they have no adroitness to construct effective leadership and workable policies, which would be beneficial to ordinary people in the country.  If it conducts scientific research on the relationship between education expansion and the political alignment to left parties in Sri Lanka, it can be found that when the education level of the general public has been expanded the alignment to left political parties has been deteriorated or radically declined to approximate zero levels. 

Although left political parties since inception have been appealing to proletarians using terms of Karl Marx’s in Communist statement, that proletarians have nothing to lose, they have a world to win, the statistical evidence is quite informative that the support of ordinary people to left political parties had been draining since independence and the lowest has reached in elections in 2019 and 2020.

After the 1956 blue revolution, left political parties adapted certain engineering strategies to safeguard the parliament seats of party leaders rather than capturing the political power of the country.  Later, they had opportunities to join with governments to obtain cabinet posts, JVP separated from governments manipulating theoretical issues or other reasons, but the truth was they were incapable of developing policies to attract people.  In the 1977 general election, traditional left political parties were wiped out from the parliament by the voters of the country. The effort of the late 1980s of JVP entirely failed and the bemoan result was primarily responsible for eliminating thousands of youths giving sorrow to parents, relatives, and friends. Many JVP supporters contemplated the situation and left the party.

Many political analysts brood that JVP was established as an alternative to left political parties in the late 1960s and the entire policy structure of the party was weakly founded on five political lessons that secretly delivered to intending members. Mr. Rohana Wijeweera rejected rural farmers stating that they were not revolutionists.   Political lessons aimed to motivate young people to overthrow the democratically elected government by an armed struggle.  The party was an affinity to Cuban and North Korean models, which were struggling to survive in isolation from the democratic world.  The party leader, Mr. Rohana Wijeweera expressed that the party would reject traditional left political parties because they were either reformists or agents of capitalists.

The five political lessons were based on points mentioned in books and speeches that were popular at that time. Political lessons were constructed from the analysis of political philosophies (Deshapalana Dharshana Vigrahaya) by JRP Suriapperuma, an article written by Mrs. Sunethra Bandaranaike criticizing left politics, some speeches delivered by Kim Ill Sung, the leader North Korea, Speeches delivered by Illanchellion of we Tamils Movement” – Api Demalu Viyaparaya” which supported to South Indian Expansionism, many speeches of Cuban Leader Fidel Crusto and Che Quora.  JVP did not get any support from a powerful country.  Five political lessons were comprised of provocative ideas against capitalism and western political opinion on various issues. 

Many Marxist concepts were complicated dilemmas that had difficulty in comprehending. Some ideas expressed by JVP leaders were vague and confused.  One idea that stuck with JVP was, the capital originates from and belongs to labor, and this idea was based on the points expressed in a booklet, Labor, and Capital written by V.I Lenin.  The main point of the book was to argue capital is a result of labor but not any factor, and it ignored the relationship with other factors such as land and entrepreneurship.

The South Indian Expansionism was not an idea of the Central government of India, the concept of South Indian Expansionism was strongly refused by India and the division of India was refused by Mathma Gnandi and succession leaders after the separation of Pakistan.  The government and opposition jointly against separatist policies and India helped Sri Lanka to destroy the LTTE movement, which had the idea of Vijaya Nagar kingdom in 2010 as the policies of LTTE focused to create the Vijaya Nagar Empire, which was a threat to many countries in the South and Southeast Asia. The JVP leader, Rohana Wijeweera was the opposite of LTTE.

Since the late 1960s, JVP was able to convince its message to a handful of people in rural areas and few university students and the majority of university students rejected JVP policies and strategies as they were blindly constructed and may be fallacious in the social and cultural environment of the country.  Few educated youths in villages armed with locally made crude weapons in 1971 and attempted to over through democratically elected government with a vast majority of parliament seats.  In 1971 and 1988-89, JVP overestimated the strength of the party looking at people who attended political rallies addressed by Mr.Rohana Wejeweera, who was a charismatic orator and also underestimated the armed power of the government forces and international supports to the government.

The government easily controlled the 1971 insurrection and later uprising with the supports of insiders such as Mr.Anura Kumara Dissanayake. JVP lost the majority of its leaders and devoted young supporters during the two struggles, which were ill-advised and wrong motivated. The experience gained from two insurrections indicated that JVP leaders never respected human values and have used education and the young generation as billyboys for sake of the party.

Did Mr.Rohana Wejeweera talk to people with an effective plan to solve economic and social issues in Sri Lanka?  This was a vital issue that many educated people discussed and debated in the past as the behavior of JVP from 1971 to 1989 was critically suspicious and many responsible people were unable to understand what they wanted to do.  JVP hasn’t had a strong trade union base or block votes of farmers or the middle class.  They attempted to play politics with high school and university students who were the future of Sri Lanka. Since 1971 JVP unreasonably put hands to Sri Lanka’s education, and the quality of education unexpectedly eroded by the manipulating issues they used for their benefits.

After 1995, JVP admitted their past mistakes of attempting to overthrow the government by an armed struggle and accepted the democratic path to capture the power by peoples’ votes.JVP gave priority for eliminating corruption, youth unemployment, and promoting nationalism and they delivered speeches in political platforms like crusaders and they captured several seats of traditional left parties in the parliament. After the general election of 2004 they joined hand with SLFP but. Separated sooner than the experience in the coalition government in 1970.  If JVP assumes that it is a policy-oriented party and it has capabilities to fight against corruption and restore transparency in administration, why did it leave the government in early 2000 and became armchair critics like traditional leftists?

Since the beginning of JVP, it had two major weaknesses in constructing the party as an alternative to the ruling government.  The first weakness was that it had no foreign exposure to run the country forward adapting to the modernization of the world.  According to radical changes physically happening in the world after the postmodern era, no one can deny or isolate from or reject the modernization of the world, to going along with the modernization of gaining the benefits of developing science, technology, and innovations to the people of Sri Lanka.  To achieve these purposes, leaders of political parties like JVP need good foreign exposure to see what is happening in the world and to construct economic, social, and political policies which are parts of modernization.

Under Deng Xiao Ping, China rapidly modernized because in spite of communist background, a conservative Maoism of a gang of four, Deng had an excellent foreign exposure by the educating in the USA and gaining knowledge of modernization to critically analyze what is going in the world and how to reshape policies of the communist party adapting to modernism.  Under Boris Yeltsin and Putin in Russia and current Vietnam and many communist countries did the same thing to modernize policies in line with changes in the postmodern era.

The second weakness is related to the economic philosophy that would be adopted by the party if it comes to power.  The current global economic fundamentals crystallize that Marxist policies aren’t working in the modern world because the capital is the center of development and the government is not an efficient organization to manage the capital to generate productivity and employment.  According to Mr.Wejeweera JVP was a party that strongly believed a  classical Marxist economic philosophy that has no faith in the capital and private entrepreneurship.  The reality in our region is that many Asian countries had good economic philosophers like Lee Kwan Yu in Singapore, Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia, and Isaku Sato in Japan.

These political leaders launched their countries with a strong economic philosophy response to economic issues.  For example, as a political leader, J.R.Jayawardane has a strong economic philosophy that many countries were willing to support by financing the projects under this philosophy.  As a result, Mr J.R.Rayawardane was able to bring modernization and reshape the economy accepting that capital is the center for development and private entrepreneurship is the hope for the eradication of poverty, generation of employment, and increasing national income.

On the other hand, Mr.Mahinda Rajapaksa has a philosophy, which is called Mahinda Chinthanaya, which is accepted by foreign governments as a direction for the country, which is the possible solution for the country’s economic issues.  I think Mr.Nipun Ranavaka is the right leader for the country after Mr.Gotabaya Rajapksa to launch Mahinda Chinthanaya.

JVP has no philosophy and people are scared to vote for him and hand over the power to them because nobody knows what they will do after capturing power. People need a clear responsible policy statement from JVP, which could be verified while they are in the opposition before taking over the power. Although few corruptions have been recorded by some JVP members it is recognized by the general public that JVP is a disciplined party, which could win the support of the public and foreign countries, if they are willing to change the classical Marxist attitudes and ready to accept the market economic policies. When compared to Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan, if market economic policies have been implemented with disciplines and constant monitoring generate the right benefits to the country Sri Lanka would have been achieved developed status. JVP must be ready to change the policies and give up the traditional left politics to attract the wide support of the domestic and international community, it can achieve the opposition leadership and Mr.Anura Kumara Should leave the leadership.     

3 Responses to “IS JVP A POLITICAL PARTY THAT DEVIATED FROM THE TRADITIONAL LEFT POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT ORIENTED?”

  1. Charles Says:

    The JVP wih wijeweera started off as aMarxist Party believing in the revolution of the proletariat. But after Wijeweera they re

  2. Charles Says:

    The JVP wih Wijeweera started off as aMarxist Party believing in the revolution of the proletariat. But after Wijeweera they realised that they have to use the Parliamentary system to establish Marxism. They succeeded using the available social moment to join with them and even get as much as 39 parliamentary seats. Then they became greedy for power. Greed in what ever field is a distructive force. They established themselves as a third political force. They did not read into the history. Even Dr. NM Perera tried to bring LSSP into parliament through an election but failed. People in Sri Lanka will never vote for a Marxist party even if JVP joins hands with UNP or joining with the middle class academics to expand their Marxism into a Marxist Socialism. But still people will not trust them. They-the JVP are now a lost creed. More they speak against Rajapaksas and SLPP they will fail to attract the attention of the Sinhala Buddhists who have recovered their appropriat place in their own country ast is primary Nation.after R Premadasa sacrifised the country to the Minority Muslims in 1988 with jis infamous reduction of cut off point in the propotional representation system to 5 per cent.

  3. Nimal Says:

    They have changed for the better. President must give Mr Hanunnehti a post to oversee good governance.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

 

 


Copyright © 2024 LankaWeb.com. All Rights Reserved. Powered by Wordpress