JVP at crossroads

Left needs life 

Editorial-April 20, 2015, 8:08 pm 

The JVP may have thought that everything was hunky dory after the defeat of President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Jan. 08 presidential election and the resultant collapse of the UPFA government. Having helped dislodge the Rajapaksa dispensation, it sought to arrest the erosion of its support base and eat into the SLFP’s vote bank while tapping the so-called floating votes with an eye to the next parliamentary election. But, its plan to shore up its image and regain lost ground on the political front has gone awry. Their former leader Somawansa Amerasinghe’s dramatic exit could not have come at a worse time for the Rathu Sahodarayas.

A founder member, close associate of Rohana Wijeweera and only JVP politburo member to escape a savage counter-terror campaign in 1989, Amerasinghe represented an ideological link between the party’s revolutionary past and democratic present. He was instrumental in reviving the party from scratch following a brutal crackdown in 1989. He is a relic from a bygone era and symbol of discarded shibboleth in the eyes of those averse to ultra radical politics. But, his influence on the revolutionary core of the JVP is far from diminished.

Amerasinghe is reported to have flayed the present JVP leadership for having deviated from what he calls the Marxist path. The question is whether the JVP has been a Marxist party in the real sense of the term though it flaunts a socialist agenda. In 1971, it made an abortive attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government purportedly to install a Marxist regime, but its second uprising was anything but a socialist struggle; its reign of terror was characterised by mindless violence. In fact, the JVP’s survival as a mainstream party all these decades without being reduced to a political creeper has been possible because it is not an orthodox Marxist outfit.

The JVP has suffered splits from time to time with some of the dyed-in the-wool Marxists within its ranks leaving in a huff. The breakaway of some of its Bolshevik activists including student leaders to form the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) is a case in point.

Splits usually occur when an ultra radical outfit remains in democratic politics over a long period of time. For, it loses its revolutionary fervour and appeal to the youth. Time was when the JVP could attract young blood through student activism, but today it has lost its grip on the student movement which is controlled by its offshoot, the FSP.

It is being asked in political circles whether Amerasinghe’s exit will have a crippling effect on the JVP. The outfit’s chips may be down at present, but it is still strong enough to absorb the shock, we reckon. Some of the old guard may not be well disposed towards the changes in the party since the election of a new leader, but they are not likely to side with their former leader en bloc.

There are certain things that men in their seventies should refrain from—marrying young women and forming new political parties are some of them. Amerasinghe is not likely to succeed in his endeavour. But, his exit is sure to have a demoralizing effect on the JVP’s rank and file in the short term; it is like a chief priest disrobing!

The JVP is at a crossroads. If it is to forge ahead as a strong democratic political force it has to change and evolve as a really mass-based party. Else, it runs the risk of going the same way as the old left.