By Sena Thoradeniya

A dog is smarter than its tail, but if the tail were smarter, then it would wag the dog”.

1. Relationship Between NPP and JVP

Even for the political analyst it is problematic to comprehend the concrete and organic relationship that exists between the Jathika Jana Balavegaya (National Peoples’ Power – NPP) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).  The relationship between the two entities, JVP and NPP or in other words the organizational structure or the hierarchical relationship of the two cannot be ascertained following their public meetings, press conferences or social media snippets. Is it the tale of the tail wagging the dog? Has the tail become smarter? Or is it something like tail shedding (docking) in the future?

Everything is being done under the auspices of NPP now. JVP occupies a bank bench, never heard of it or it has gone into oblivion. The rhetoric is Malimawa Presidential candidate is destined to win the Presidential Elections, Malimawa will form the next government and Malimawa will definitely punish all those who ruined Sri Lanka. No mention about the JVP. Malimawa has conveniently dumped the JVP or JVP has gone into hibernation. What are the reasons for this metamorphosis? Is it to obliterate their murderous past, its politics, ideology, strategy and tactics and come forward as paragons of virtue to deceive the gullible electorate, to attract a wider segment of the society, to reenact Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?  Or is it something like tail shedding, a defense mechanism enabling to escape the clutches of a predator (as in lizards)?

2. United Front

To prepare this article we consulted the official website of the NPP. Our thoughts that the NPP is the broad United Front formed by the JVP under its leadership was proved wrong within a few seconds and it confirmed our knowledge of JVP politics from its inception in 1965 that JVP is averse to the formation of a broad United Front. Readers are reminded that by United Front we do not mean coalitions of a plethora of political parties formed for winning parliamentary or presidential elections.

This aspect would be investigated bringing teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao to the discussion. Basically, a United Front is a front of all oppressed classes, strata and social groups formed in different countries and different periods of history in a given country.

Thus, a United Front is not a coalition of heads of political parties, a coalition of different political parties or civil society” organisations.

Under capitalism those who suffer include not only workers, peasants and petty- bourgeoisie; even the sections of bourgeoisie, small and medium producers and traders suffer. This condition calls for a wider democratic front.

Basic characteristic of the United Front is, it draws people – revolutionary or non-revolutionary- in common struggle; it presents a set of demands acceptable to revolutionary and non-revolutionary people; the forces or segments involved in it remain independent; there are intense battles between ideas, tactics and strategies among various factions in the United Front.

It should be reiterated that the concept of people varies in different historical epochs and times. In the struggle against the slavery the emerging landlord class played a progressive role. In the struggle against the landlord gentry the role of the emerging bourgeoisie was progressive. Mao adds to this that it varies in content in different countries and different periods of history in a given country.

Marx and Engels in Manifesto of the Communist Party”, say that The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties”. Its Section IV discusses how the Communists ally themselves with different segments in different countries.

Marx and Engels founded The International Workingmen’s Association or the First International, that united a variety of different Communist, Radical, Socialist, Social Democratic, and Anarchist groups and trade unions. It was the result of years of hard work by Marx and Engels to establish a revolutionary working-class party.

It was Leninin his book, What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats”, (1894) for the first time advanced the idea of a revolutionary alliance of the workers and peasants in overthrowing tsardom, the landlords and the bourgeoisie. In Lenin’s opinion the first duty of the Russian Marxists was to unite the Marxist circles into a united Socialist Workers’ Party. Lenin’s work was a magnificent reply to articles published in the organ of the Narodniks, who advocated reconciliation with the tsarist government and waged a bitter struggle against Marxism and the Russian Marxists.

Lenin’s Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution” (1905) is a major work in this regard. The complete unanimity of international revolutionary Social-Democracy on all major questions of programme and tactics is a most incontrovertible fact”, said Lenin.

In his ’Left-Wing Communism’ an infantile Disorder” (1920) Lenin describes the diseases of those who refused any united action with other parties, those refused to seek out allies in the name of independence, total purity” and opposition to any compromise. Lenin pointed out that compromises are essential, helped the party and class to gain strength and weaken the opponent’s effort to divide the movement and break its unity.

He said Russian Bolsheviks never refused to support the bourgeoisie against the Tsarism. He further said that Russian Bolsheviks found out allies even in most vacillating and undependable. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand the smallest grain of Marxism”. 

Lenin was the genius who conceptualized the idea of United Front and implemented it successfully. He was the architect of the party of the most advanced revolutionary workers- the Bolshevik Party. But at the high tide of October, the United Front remained crucial. Bolsheviks forged an alliance with non-Bolshevik workers, poor peasants, soldiers and sailors and established the power of the Soviets.  

NPP bigwigs should study Mao’s seminal work, On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism” written in 1935 to learn United Front tactics and understand the necessity of organizing a broad National United Front.

What it does now is aiming at a variety of targets and as Mao said their bullets hit not the principal enemies but lesser enemies and allies. It had failed to single out the principal enemy and failed to draw to its side those who would become its friends. We cannot say that the NPP wants to follow what we say because it is not a Marxist-Leninist front. 

Mao said a fine thing which befits Anura Kumara and his fellow travelers: Three year- olds have many ideas which are right, but they cannot be entrusted with serious national or world affairs because they do not understand them yet.”  This may be the reason why Anura Kumara avoided IMF Head of Mission when he visited NPP headquarters at Pelawatta. It was a serious national issue!

What Anura Kumara and his ilk do is as Mao stated, driving the fish into deep waters and the sparrows into the thickets”. Men and women who throng into NPP meetings do not constitute a broad United Front.

Mao said united front tactics are the only Marxist-Leninist tactics” that win the masses in their millions” (1937).

Mao advised to maintain both the United Front and Independence of the Communist Party and guard infiltration by enemy agents (1938). Every party and group in the United Front must preserve its ideological, political and organizational independence.  He said (A)all political parties and groups in the united front must help each other and make mutual concessions for the sake of long-term cooperation”. Such help and concessions should be positive, not negative or one-sided. As Mao stated we must not split the united front, but neither should we allow ourselves to be bound hand and foot”.

These theories and practical experiences do not apply to NPP as all groups affiliated to it are JVP’s proxies and bound hand and foot to JVP. NPP assures its adherents that they are good guys” and others are bad.

United Fronts are formed internationally also. Best example for this is the international United Front against fascist aggression. With the emergence of fascism in Germany, Italy and Japan to meet the challenge a broad international United Front was needed.

As Mao put forward in 1941, (T) the Soviet Union’s sacred war of resistance against fascist aggression is being waged not only in its own defence but in defence of all nations struggling to liberate themselves from fascist enslavement”. It was Stalin who forged an alliance between Soviet Union, Britain, United States and other countries who were opposed to the fascist rulers of Germany, Italy and Japan. During this period Communist Party of China persevered Kuomintang-Communist cooperation to drive the Japanese imperialists out of China.  The world revolutionary united front with the Soviet Union at its helm defeated fascist Germany, Italy and Japan. This gave a tremendous impetus to national liberation struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

In the colonies excluding the comprador- bourgeoisie, national bourgeoisie and other democratic forces participated in the national liberation movements.    

In cultural work too, a broad United Front is indispensable. Mao’s essay The United Front in Cultural Work” (1944) is a must read for the NPP cultural activists if it has such a set instead of a set of pop artists, soap opera actors, actors and actresses of Sinhala erotic films and stuntmen.  Mao’s Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art” (1942) may be annoying and burdensome to people like Lal Kantha who proposes a pageant of bare-breasted and scantily dressed women from Matara to Colombo to attract tourists and his penchant for erotica.  Mao’s political report presented to the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China (1945) titled On Coalition Government” may be tough even to Anura Kumara and other NPP academics! 

3. NPP Website

Official website of the NPP says; NPP is a political movement made up of 21 different groups, including political parties, youth groups, women’s groups, trade unions and other civil society organisations”. It was established in 2009 as a result of a series of conversations (?) about the need for a progressive political platform”.  The drafters are careful not to describe it as a political party.  For them it is only a political movement, a progressive political platform”.

Instead of providing definitions to movement and political party respectively suffice to give some examples to movement in Sri Lankan context, such as Cooperative Movement, Suriyamal Movement, Mahila Samithi, Village Reawakening Movement, Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, Movement for Interracial Justice (MIRJ), Movement for Defense of Democratic Rights (MDDR), Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) etc.

JVP heads the list of Partner organisations and political parties of the NPP”. Other than the JVP, only other political groupings (we don’t call them parties) in this list are, Sri Lanka Communist Party- Alternative Group”, Eksath Vamansika Balavegaya” (United Left Power) and a rump of 1971, 71 Sahodarathwaya Sansadaya” (71 Brotherhood).

Of this the former group supported Maithripala Sirisena at the 2015 Presidential elections. According to Asian Mirror” this group include 21 members of the CPSL. (One of them was the head of a Typists’ Union). It was the Communist Party of Ceylon that was instrumental in denying Don Nandasiri Wijeweera a re-entry visa when he visited Ceylon for a short holiday from Moscow, dubbed JVP as a CIA Kemana” (CIA fish trap) in 1965. JVP/DJV killed several Communist Party stalwarts including L. W. Panditha, its Trade Unions Federation leader and George Ratnayake, Lanka Jathika Guru Sangamaya, the Teachers’ Union President.

A fine example of JVP’s underhand political maneuvers can be seen in what happened to the 71 Sahodarathwaya Sansadaya” (71 Brotherhood). This group consisted of the rump of Janatha Sangamaya, a breakaway group of JVP formed after the 1971 insurrection.  Some of its leading cadres such as T. B. Wijesuriya and Jamis Ethugala were brutally butchered by the JVP in 1988-89. Notwithstanding, its ideologue Wasantha Dissanayake contested last general elections in NPP ticket. True to JVP’s underhand political maneuvers, 71 Comrades” were ousted and the grouping’s leadership was seized by those agent provocateurs sent by the JVP, alarmingly not even born in 1971! So 71 Sahodarathwaya Sansadaya” (71 Brotherhood) cannot be taken as an independent entity now.

This was the same modus operandi adapted by Ceylon Teachers’ Union (CTU) President, the late H. N. Fernando, Wijeweera’s brother-in-law and CTU’s General Secretary Chitral Perera, in ousting non-JVP leaders from the CTU. National level office-bearers were elected at the Union Place Headquarters in Colombo, before the arrival of non-JVP district leaders from far away corners of the island (who were the majority) who had voting rights.

All political leaders are mortal; their underhand political maneuvers are immortal!

Our efforts in finding any information of the so-called Eksath Vamansika Balavegaya” (United Left Power) drew a blank as nobody of my associates were able to provide any clue. My guess is that it is a nameboard of a former Trotskyite group now under the control of JVP like the 71 Sahodarathwaya Sansadaya”.

Other organisations mentioned in the list except Dabindu Saamoohikaya” (Dabindu Collective) are trade unions, organisations of women, public servants, doctors, expatriate workers, intellectuals”, university teachers, estate workers, youth, Bhikkhus, cultural activists, all front organisations of JVP. All these front organisations played an active role at the Galle Face Carnival. Many of these groups mushroomed during Galle Face Days and afterwards. Dabindu Saamoohikaya” was in existence for about two decades, now devoured by JVP.

Sri Lankans domiciled in foreign countries and who live in clover and those working overseas (Ethera Api” clan) send millions to NPP/JVP reserves with no knowledge of the ground realities and the impending catastrophe. During the Galle Face protest Sunil Handunnetti demanded Ethera Api” members not to send remittances to Sri Lanka.

4. NPP/JVP, As the Biggest NGO in Sri Lanka  

All organisations mentioned above are NGOs; NPP-JVP combine has become the largest and highly funded, cash-rich NGO in Sri Lanka. Will the voters in Sri Lanka strive to bring into power an NGO is the biggest question.

To understand this, one would carefully study NPP’s official website under the title Prosperity Redefined: NPP’s Vision for Tomorrow”. Question is why an NPP when there is a JVP which has a long history to Redefine Prosperity”? Hasn’t it redefined prosperity”? Or it has redefined destruction and death only?

This document spells out again what the so-called developmental NGOs” funded by SIDA (Swiss), CIDA (Canadian), NORAD (Norway) FINIDA (Finland) and World Vision International (the largest Christian NGO), parroted a long time ago to bring forth development and prosperity. Now these catchy phrases are possessed by the so-called civil society” grandees and environmental lobbyists. A united future”, environmental sustainability”, empower individuals”, strengthen communities”, champion innovation”, prosperous tomorrow”, reshaping the future”, new standards for success”, equal opportunities”, equal  and greater participation”, equitable distribution of opportunities, resources and privileges through advocacy”, forging a society of true inclusivity and justice”, resilient economy”, accountable and transparent political culture” are the loan words borrowed from the NGO cartel operating in Sri Lanka.

Julie Chung in her daily sermons (X messages) harps on virtues of inclusivity, advocacy, resilience, transparency, accountability etc. 

NPP’s Rapid Response to Overcome Current Challenge” is nothing more than a replica of an NGO document which does not need any further examination.

Under Why Us” it discusses social justice, economic democracy, solidarity and cooperation, sustainability and corruption free governance, all NGO crap. There are NGOs like CPA, NPC and Transparency International and many more upholding these visions” and missions”, all rubbish associated with Corporate Planning, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) etc. 

No word about Marxism-Leninism or socialism or a classless society. It is only the capitalist English press in Sri Lanka including one or two bourgeois theoreticians and a few who are domiciled in foreign countries still call the JVPers Rathu Sahodarayas” and JVP/NPP as Marxist-Leninist. They call it Marxist-Leninist because of their narrow understanding.

Lenin had replied to them: When I speak of a narrow understanding of Marxism, I have the Marxists themselves in mind. One cannot help remarking in this connection that Marxism is most atrociously narrowed and garbled when our liberals and radicals undertake to expound it in the pages of the legal press.” And if our liberals and radicals knew Marxism properly (if only from German works) they would be ashamed thus to distort it in the pages of censored press”.This applies to our columnists of the English press who provide theory to NPP/JVP.

WimalWeerawansa correctly identified Anura Kumara as the Rathu Alipetiya” diagnosing his dealings with the yahapalana government of Maithripala and Ranil.

At NPP public rallies no speaker speaks of Marxism-Leninism, socialism, its strategies and economic, political and cultural resurgence they bring forward or its statecraft.

5. Old Left  

Old Left political parties had a strong trade union base. Hundreds of trade unions covering almost all sectors of the economy and trades came under the trade union federations affiliated to the Left parties, such as Ceylon Trade Union Federation (CTUF- affiliated to Peking Wing”), Ceylon Federation of Trade Unions (CFTU- affiliated to Moscow Wing”), Ceylon Federation of Labour (CFL- affiliated to LSSP) and Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU of Bala Tampoe- LSSP until 1964; after 1971 Tampoe became Wijeweera’s political mentor). They also, except CMU, had students’, women’s and to a certain extent literary and cultural organisations. None of these parties formed a double” aiming elections.

6.  NPP and JVP: The Façade: NPP is a Malleable Object of JVP  

Now let us examine numbers constituting the Central Committee of JVP and Executive Committee of NPP respectively. Official website of JVP mentions 26 names as members of its Central Committee. NPP website mentions 61 Executive Committee members of which 19 are JVP Central Committee members. Only 7 Central Committee members are left behind. My informants say that they are either purged or left owing to differences of opinion. I don’t call it an ideological struggle as no ideology remains with JVP except winning Presidential and Parliamentary elections.

This is ample testimony that NPP is controlled by JVP. What the JVP has done is rebranding and repositioning it. Remember that Harini Amarasuriya, their meteorite is not a member of the JVP Central Committee. We have discussed earlier why she was given the solitary lot JVP got to nominate a nominated MP bypassing all their seniors and ex-MPs, even ex-ministers like that rustic, small- scale chicken farmer, Lal Kantha who creates more and more news to the detriment of JVP/NPP. 

In our earlier articles titled, Janus-faced JVP: False Conceptions and Harini Amarasuriya Factor” posted on 14 December 2023 and ’Helplessness and Confusion’ in the Coming Year” posted on 31 December 2023 respectively, we have discussed about the Executive Committee members of the NPP other than the JVP Central Committee members. We don’t want to repeat what we had stated.

But we would say something about the intellectuals” again. Among the NPP Executive Committee members there are some professors and Ph.Ds. Except for an academic brainwashed and planted by the United States at Peradeniya and a plagiarist at Sabaragamuwa, we are not aware of the others or the contributions they have made to the existing body of knowledge in general or to their chosen field of study in particular.

What we see in NPP is a hotchpotch of liberal ideas ranging from uttering casual, arbitrary and illogical statements, ultra-democracy, lack of organizational discipline, subjectivism and individualism, close-doorism, maintaining a self-perceived purity”, to adventurism, commandism and military viewpoint.

Our sub-title of this essay, Vulgar Representation of Marxist United Front Politics” is fitting to JVP and NPP as neither the JVP nor NPP are Marxist organisations.

7. Why an NPP? 

Reasons are many.

1. To erase the past history of 1971 and 1988-1989. In 1971 some of them removed the intestines of Grama Sevakas simply using manna knives. In 1988-89 they imposed unofficial curfews and killed scores of innocents who did not follow the instructions given in their chits”; killed even petty-traders who kept open their shops despite JVP/DJV curfews; forcibly collected national identity cards; beheaded and gunned down scores of people and did not allow to remove their bodies; funerals were conducted according to their instructions, not allowing the dead body (coffins were not allowed) to raise up to shoulder level;  gunned down the first persons who went to cast their votes; set on fire banks, tea and rubber factories, busses, transformers, agrarian service stations; the list is too long. More than the capitalists and those who belonged to upper middle class it was the lower middle class, peasants and workers who suffered a lot from JVP/DJV atrocities. 

Majority of the NPP supporters do not know the heinous crimes committed by the JVP/DJV as many of them were not born in that period.

2. JVP knows the stigma of the crimes they have committed especially in 1988-1899 although they have not admitted those crimes making a self-criticism. Its official website does not say anything about what they have done during this period and inner-party struggles.

3. To paint themselves that they are faultless, uncorrupt, totally innocent, impeccable and upright, they wanted a sheep’s clothing and created the NPP. Jesus Christ said, beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly they are ravening wolves”. Buddhist canonical literature refers to a myriad of such false prophets. But Lal Kantha’s (JVP Central Committee member/NPP Executive Committee member) psychopathic utterances expose the wolf’s true features. His recent utterances reveal what type of arts, literature and culture the NPP front- liners profess and propagate.

4. True to JVP’s tactics since 1965 JVP disowned themselves what they did in the name of revolution”. Wijeweera betrayed his own comrades testifying at the Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) that the 1971 insurrection was a plan of Loku Athula (Nimalasiri Jayasinghe who later joined Chandrika and UNP) to capture power. Before the insurrection, while in police custody he wrote the names of other political activists of rival groups on the reverse side of the photographs shown to him by the CID facilitating their arrest.  One of my colleagues was arrested, tortured and incarcerated as Wijeweera had told the police officers of a deformity in his right hand, easing his identification.  

5. Now Anura Kumara and his gang believe that the next president elect will be Anura Kumara and the next government will be formed by the NPP. I have discussed in my earlier pieces that it is a herculean task reaching 51% from the present 3% and attaining 113 from the present 3 in the parliament is a miracle respectively.

6. When the elections results will be declared NPP will create havoc in the country saying that they cannot accept as true the election results, as Trump and Bolsarano did in the US and Brazil respectively. NPP followers, sympathizers and fanatics will be the cannon fodder that will be used by the JVP for these protests and agitations. JVP leadershipwill hide as they did in 1971!

7. Nalinda Jayatissa did not rule out an armed struggle if Anura Kumara was not leading the poll.

8. The role of the ex-servicemen who had joined the ranks of NPP will be crucial in a time like this. A respected retired General told the writer, one of these ex-servicemen hopes to become the next Defense Minister. He has assured those who are close to him top government jobs, ambassador posts and promotions for those who were cashiered for misdeeds.

Still NPP or the ex-servicemen who joined the ranks of NPP have not replied to the allegation made by One Who Knows” (Sunday Island of December 24, 2023), about the Deputy Commander of Sri Lanka troops in the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, in which about 114 Sri Lankan troops including 3 officers were involved in sex exploitation of hundreds of children.    

9. A colleague told the writer that NPP is the neo-liberal arm of the JVP funded to be the rabble-rousers and ground campaign contractors propped up by the US and India. When the NPP men and women come to the streets”, American and Indian forces will land here to bring normalcy” and install a puppet government.  

JVP/NPP know that they cannot come to power. They are funded not to take over power but to create havoc, mayhem and instability. Their recent stupid, muddleheaded and thoughtless statements (for example legalizing prostitution, a pageant of bare-breasted damsels) and damage control acts by some ill-equipped interlocutors such as Harini Amarasuriya and Nalinda Jayatissa show in what type of a chaotic internal environment the NPP/JVP operate.

When Lal Kantha says that his party is even ready for an armed struggle if the need arises and he will not shy away from such action as he was involved in the armed struggle in 1988/1989, (he has not told the journalist how he saved his own skin), Jayatissa says that they believe in capturing power through electoral politics. Lal Kantha bellows that they will definitely unleash repression once they capture state power (Rajya balaya aawoth api anivaryayenma mardanaya karanawa”).  Whenhe comes to the rescue of his comrade who advocated legalizing of prostitution, he should be asked to glance through the pages of Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”. (There was a Sinhala translation of this classic; the original Sinhala translation was destroyed by the translator himself when he joined the Hath Hawula” of Dudley Senanayake in 1965).

Next step after legalizing prostitution is opening up Red Light Districts” and legalizing same-sex marriage. In the NPP Executive Committee there are several men and women who advocate LGBTIQ rights, who publicly pronounce their sexual orientation and who have produced such drama and films. The woman NPP cum JVP Executive Committee member who championed the rights of sex workers should be taught that in Western countries producing adult films is not legally prohibited and protected as free speech. According to Federal Law in the US, no performers under the age of 18 are allowed to perform as pornstars. Production companies keep Custodian of Records that record the age of the stars and provide a certificate that all pornstars are above the age of 18.

This again shows us some powerful hidden hands are behind the NPP/JVP.