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| Sunday, 5 May 2002 |
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JVP factor on May Day Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake
The interest in May Day had been progressively declining in recent years but appeared to have picked up somewhat this year perhaps because of the advent of the new Government. This, of course, is paradoxical because it is precisely UNP Governments beginning with President J.R. Jayewardene's regime which have sought to diffuse the political character of May Day and make it into a carnival in which everybody can take part.
On coming into power in 1977 Mr. Jayewardene decreed that all cinema halls should screen films free on May Day, declared that there would be no UNP demonstration and that the meeting itself would be short followed by a grand musical fiesta featuring singers from India. This year too the UNP followed suit except that the theme of peace was advanced with gusto. Even traditional UNP politics was subsumed in this rallying cry and benediction of peace on earth and goodwill to all men including Comrade Velupillai Prabhakaran. In fact, this was one May Day where politics was almost eclipsed. Apart from the traditional and fringe Left parties hardly anybody was bothered with the economy or the working class. While the UNP intoned Shalon the SLFP (whatever happened to the PA?) and the JVP competed with each other to capture the great Sinhala high ground, the SLFP actually climbing the hills of Haputale seemingly to demonstrate its fidelity to the nationalist cause. From the Left platforms Comrades Vickremabahu Karunaratne and the irrepressible Bala Tampoe (who had done a putsch on poor Comrade Vasudeva) did raise questions about privatisation, declining living standards and the potential threat to working class rights but this was lost in the roar of sabre-rattling emanating from elsewhere. Indeed this will be the trend of politics in the months to come. The economy will be eclipsed as the UNP will be battling the SLFP and the JVP about the post-MoU scenario and whether the country has been actually sold down the Mahaweli to the LTTE. As usual the JVP demonstration was the most impressive and this columnist had a ring-side view of it since it assembled at the S de S Jayasinghe park in Dehiwela opposite his humble working man's homestead. One of course gives full marks always to the JVP for its many massed bands and marching squads and its motor-cycle outriders but this year the party excelled itself with its arresting and sometimes bizarre-looking art. Uncle Sam rode high on many of its floats luridly strangling Mother Lanka while a bleak picture was painted of a country soon to be laid low by predatory privatisation. Of course the Prime Minister and the LTTE chief were not spared in their symbiotic relationship while the demonstration was studded with several life-like elephants captured in all kinds of grotesque postures. However, the thoroughly upper middle and middle class householders of Allan Avenue who take their constitutionals in the park were disappointed that the JVP's pin-up boys did not lead the long march from Dehiwela although some of them caught a fleeting glimpse of some of them before the demonstration actually assembled. But that is by the way. As usual what May Day demonstrated this year as well was how fractious and fragmented the Left is. The UNP and the SLFP are anyway late comers to the May Day barricades but where was the once militant Left? The LSSP today is confined to the lot of being represented by a Buddhist monk in Parliament admirable and unorthodox although Ven. Baddegama Samitha is for a bhikku. By its very abduction from working class politics the Left parties have left the high ground open for the JVP to capture. But what kind of party is the JVP? Time was when the then comfortable leaders of the LSSP and the CP, ensconced in ministerial seats under an SLFP-led United Front Government, scoffed at the JVP as a bunch of youthful petty-bourgeois adventurists. But looking at the JVP constituency as it assembled for May Day one was struck by the broad swathe which is represented. The JVP is no longer a pure youth party. Youth there were in their numbers, even schoolboys in white, but there were also rural and urban middle-class elements, white-collar workers, men in sarong and men in trousers while I even over-heard one processionist urging another to come to the starting point over a mobile telephone. A far cry from the days when Rohana Wijeweera travelled by CTB bus from one rural outpost to another. But the point is how does the JVP mobilise this constituency into a coherent whole? With its opposition to the MoU the JVP is again showing signs of regressing to the post-1987 days when it declared war against the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement although one hopes they will not take politics to its extreme conclusion as it did then. But how does the JVP propose to tame the Governments of the US and Norway if not the Wickremesinghe administration and the LTTE? Can the JVP mobilise enough domestic and international opinion for this? Whatever the answer might be what is clear is that as we have already observed we are in for a period when politics as we know it will give way to an exhibition of sabre-rattling. Tailpiece: Trust Comrade Vasudeva to hog the limelight even though his loquacious gab was closed this May Day. Apparently he had taken part in Comrade Bala Tampoe's trade union demonstration representing an obscure plantation trade union but Bala had silenced Vasu fearing that his rally would be shown to be a Vasu political platform. At some point the hated capitalist press also seemed to have put a spanner in the works claiming that this was a Vasu meeting thus giving equal billing to both comrades. All a little too baffling for us petit-bourgeois columnists, we fear but Comrade Leon Trotsky art thou listening? |
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