How far can rebels and rebellions go?

By N Sathiya Moorthy

SJB Leader of the Opposition, Sajith Premadasa, his colleagues and erstwhile partners like Patali Champika Ranawaka have to be thanked – and congratulated – for bolding walking out of the anti-government protests in capital Colombo the other way when they saw early signs of it turning violent. They were booed when they left, but their exit too possibly brought the situation under control, as if the organisers of the protest wanted to demonstrate their street-strength to Sajith & Co than the government.

Clearly, former parliamentarian Hirunika Premachandra stood out, and away from the party’s directive, and stood her ground, too. The decision for SJB members to leave the protest venue at early signs of violence seems to have been taken even before they participated in the rally. She has been playing a lone fiddle for the past several months by being present in various protest sites where her party colleagues were missing.

Hirunika’s was only the prominent name when yet-to-be-christened Aragalaya protestors set fire to an army bus and other hurdles placed in their way outside the personal residence of then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, on the night of 1 April. She almost became a household name after the young and charming girl began appearing in front of TV news cameras on most days the court was hearing her parliamentarian-father’s assassination case, with tears in her eyes.

She might have gone places in politics but then reports of goons attaching to her resorting to violence, possibly did her in. For her, Aragalaya seems to be a time for reviving her sagging political career, this time as a mother of three. In doing so, she seems to become increasingly unacceptable to moderates in the party, just as she was in the Rajapaksas-led SLFP first and the UNP later, before moving away to the breakaway SBJ at inception.

Spineless or what

Yet, JVP’s Tilvin Silva has called Premadasa ‘spineless’ and said that they stayed away form the anti-government protest only because of it. Lie. The JVP understood early on that their breakaway FSP was being organising the protest, and they could not be seen as playing second fiddle.

Granting that Sajith and SJB had not participated, would the JVP have taken part in the protest? Anyway, what did Tilvin mean by having a ‘spine’? Does he imply participating in any violence, and Sajith giving lead to mobs and mobsters?

The problem was with the SJB and Sajith. Today, Sajith has started talking about taking to the streets, to demand local government polls. They could have organised such a protest, citing other reasons, before the FSP protest instead of participating in it.

Anyway, the SJB is the last part that could now demand early elections for local government bodies. As part of the parent UNP, they were party to the inordinate and inexplicable delays that their ‘Government of National Unity’ (GNU) inflicted on the local government system. Yes, the current delay has added to the woes, and the SLPP power behind President Ranil Wickremesinghe had promised early polls, when Gota became President in 2019.

Ready to govern

JVP’s Tilvin has also said that they were ready to form the next government. it is not clear if he was expressing the party’s willingness to do so, or was talking from perceptions of a growing electoral strength. Party leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake had said as much, more than in the past, in recent weeks.

In a democracy, power comes to the ballot box, not the barrel of the gun or street-protests. If the JVP has the numbers, then there should be no problem for them to come to power. But from the post-Aragalaya mood, the voters may want to know more about their constructive economic policies and programmes, not stopping with criticising those in power or those others who aspire to be in power.

Ideologically, it is going to be an even more difficult job for the JVP just now, though as  ironically it is also their best possible chance, given the post-Aragalaya people’s mood. There is general agreement across the country that the government would have to take IMF aid, and on its terms, and also woo the ‘liberal’ West with its ‘market capitalism’, to stabilise the economy. Prosperity has to wait.

Can the JVP balance its aspirations and hopes with ground realities, and come up with an economic policy, and convince their traditional rural voters, alongside the eternally-antagonistic urban middle class that they are here to stay and also to govern – and not behave like an eternal Opposition party in government’s shoes? That is not too difficult, but it is going to take the party a lot of courage to do so.

Return of the violent past?

It is in this background that SLPP”s Namal Rajapaksa has recalled the JVP’s ‘violent past’, dating back to 1988-89, and claim that they are here only to try and take the nation back to those days. Whether it is true or not, the JVP should know that if they do not want to rule the nation with the barrel of the gun as their only modus, then they ay not win a democratic election in the first place.

For now, whoever was behind it, the Aragalaya protests has also exposed the inherent limitations of such a scheme. They could get the Rajapaksas out, but could not impose their will, at will. Unsung and unacknowledged, the nation’s deep-rooted democratic instincts wrested the initiative and today, Sri Lanka has a government that is closed to being democratic than any alternative – and definitely as mandated by the Constitution.

New kid in the block

There is nothing to suggest that in the elections since the FSP entered the scene in 2015, that the party could substantially cut into the parent JVP’s five-plus per cent traditional vote-share. Yet, the JVP’s take has gone down substantially to around 3.5 per cent – substantially in a limited sense, of course.

It also brings out the fact that for winning the next presidential elections, the JVP, even when it is ready to govern, has to get almost all of the required 50-per cent vote-share. The party’s continued assertions wants it believed that they have the numbers. The taste of the pudding is only in the eating – and more so in this particular case.

That leaves the FSP, or the Frontline Socialist Party, the relatively new kid in the block. But the credit, and all the discredit for the Aragalaya protests and the more recent one goes to the party, it would seem. In context, the FSP is worse off than even the JVP when having to prove its administrative mettle and ideological re-orientation for the middle-of-the-road voters (who decide the elections) to be convinced that they are serious about this business of running a government within the nation’s proud democratic framework.

Credit, discredit

The JVP, which at one stage had sought to take credit for Aragalaya, or at least a part thereof, seems wanting none of it. This could mean that they want to shed the past image, unlike what Namal wants to project them as.

The fact is that the nation’s politics is still in the hands of the traditional mainstream parties and their leaderships. Call it a curse if you want, post-Aragalaya, but that is the ground reality. It remains to be seen if certain post-Aragalaya opinion polls that put JVP’s Dissanayake at the head of the presidential sweepstake, will ever come true.

At least, the party and its leadership have not demonstrated their willingness to prove themselves, and prepare the nation for them – other than expressing a hope, an aspiration, which is not proved on the ground. That is saying a lot!

(The writer is a policy analyst & political commentator, based in Chennai, India. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)