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| Sunday, 18 January 2004 |
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Editor, Sunday Observer. E-mail: [email protected] Snail mail : Sunday Observer, 35, D.R.Wijewardana Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 11 2429239 / 2331181 Fax : 94 11 2429230 New political alliance The signing of a political pact between the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People's Liberation Front) will be a significant political development. How beneficial this pact will be for the country and nation as a whole remains to be seen, though. The SLFP-JVP pact is significant firstly in that the JVP's decision to link up with what its first generation of leaders had called a "bourgeois" political party and against whose governmental regime its first insurgency was launched, implies a quantum shift in the politics of this once 'revolutionary' political movement. Clearly the Peramuna leadership of today is ready to take the responsibility of sharing, in some form, in 'bourgeois' government and the management of a capitalist economy under the close supervision of the IMF and World Bank, international institutions usually criticised by the JVP as representing 'imperialist' interests. While in one sense this new alignment means that the JVP has politically moved towards the ideological Centre, at the same time, its involvement in governance, even as a Parliamentary or electoral ally, could mean a welcome injection of a greater sense of social sensitivity and a greater priority being given to the needs and problems of the layers of poor and under-privileged Sri Lankans who constitute the bulk of the population. The JVP's injection of what it claims to be 'social democracy' into governmental or presidential policy may serve to modulate the current dogmatic emphasis purely on IMF-style monetarism and market-based development strategy. Recent governmental regimes, both of the UNP and of the People's Alliance, have followed this IMF and World Bank dictated economic formula despite growing evidence that market growth alone will not lessen economic deprivation and injustice and, indeed, has actually worsened social disparities in Sri Lanka society. However, the readiness of the JVP to move to the ideological centre should be of some reassurance to the business community which only saw it as a Marxist movement hostile to the capitalist class. The local as well as the global business community will, nevertheless, watch developments closely for signals as to how business-friendly the new SLFP-JVP alliance will be. The portents of the new alliance for the peace process also seem not to be detrimental. JVP spokesmen, in what seems to be another dramatic shift in policy, have recently emphasised that their party is no longer hostile to negotiations with the LTTE under the current framework deriving from the 2002 Cease-fire Agreement (CFA). This shift in policy by a party with solid foundations among the mass of Sinhala people and with a historical record of Marxian secularism, will be of immense value if the JVP is to genuinely support the efforts of the Tamil people to win some form of self-determination within the framework of a single Sri Lankan State. JVP support for a continued peace process will bring to bear a valuable favourable influence on the mass of Sinhala opinion when the time comes for re-structuring of the Sri Lankan State in order to accommodate a suitable framework for the harmonious reunification of the country. But such a process of political reform requires the support of the UNP as well. The Sri Lanka Freedom Party and its older allies, the LSSP and CP, have long been confronted with the challenge to dilute their political competitiveness in order to collaborate with the UNP, whether in Opposition or Government, to enable a final political settlement of the ethnic conflict. While the previous PA Government did make efforts to involve the UNP, then in Opposition, in the peace process, the UNP never reciprocated to that degree when it came back into Government. Will the new SLFP-JVP alliance be ready to seek a systematic collaboration with the UNP as well as other parliamentary parties for the sake of peace and national reunification? |
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