|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 25 January 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
New SLFP-JVP alliance: Can 'social democracy' help the peace process? Observations by Lakshman Gunasekera
'Even a mad, rampant, elephant will trip on a twisted clump of grass. In union is strength," pointed out Somadeva, the tenth century Jaina teacher in his political treatise Neethivaakyamirtha (Nectar of Aphorisms on Polity). The leaderships of neither the Sri Lanka Freedom Party nor the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (despite Leader Somavansa's new emphasis on "indigenous thought") who, last week, sealed the political alliance between the two parties, are likely to be familiar with the Neethivaakya. Given the extremity of the Sri Lankan colonial experience, their theoretical knowledge is probably largely limited to European political philosophy. But they will certainly appreciate the remarkable relevance of the ancient metaphor to the electoral symbols of the opposing Sri Lankan political forces. Both these parties have experienced the rampages of our modern-day political 'Elephant', the United National Party. The UNP, under J.R. Jayewardene and R. Premadasa, broke all bounds of constitutionality, legality, democracy, justice and plain civilised decency in its rampage against the Parliamentary Opposition, the SLFP, as well as the extra-parliamentary opposition by both the JVP as well as the Tamil movement for self-determination. Anti-systemic movement Happily or unhappily, the nineteen seventies and eighties did not see "twisted clumps of grass" of bonding either between the SLFP and JVP on the basis of an ethnocentric Sinhala nationalism or between the Tamil militant movement and the JVP on the basis of an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist pan Sri Lankan nationalism. There were many Sri Lankan Leftists (including myself) at the time who yearned for such a bonding between the northern and southern militant movements and, indeed, there were a few who actually worked at it, but such a combined anti-systemic movement never took off. Sri Lankan politics and society itself would have been transformed if such a bonding had occurred. Whether it would have been for the worse or better, I leave my readers to decide. Today, more and more people, even the capitalist class, are being strenuously reassured that the JVP is no longer 'anti-systemic'. In fact, the JVP's supreme Leader, Somavansa Amarasinghe, seems to be really straining to put across the message that any Marxian leanings of the JVP are now, more or less, set aside. He was quoted in the recent internet interview as insisting that the JVP's political philosophy derives more from Sinhala and Buddhist wellsprings and favours a 'democratic' capitalism. I said "straining" because Comrade Somavansa was probably the least known among the old Rohana Wijeweera leadership for his philosophical-theoretical prowess. In fact that prowess is still not showing judging from the frantic damage repair now on to actually deny his statements in that interview. But then, neither the ,migr, Comrade Leader nor any of the new post-Wijeweera leadership is exactly famous for political theorising or any kind of intellectual sophistication. Not that that lack of sophistication bothers the SLFP's leadership as that major national political formation now repeats history in cementing its second link up with the Sri Lankan Left. More traditional Marxists may argue that the JVP today is no longer 'Left' in the Marxian sense. But if the JVP is abandoning conventional Marxism, it is still very much a political force articulating the interests of social classes and groups usually mobilised by Marxist parties on the basis of 'class struggle'. In fact, the JVP has now displaced the traditional, Marxian Left in that political mobilisation. It is in that sense that the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, long established as the alternate bourgeois political party, has repeated history. In 1964, the SLFP established its historic link up with the powerful Left parties of the time, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party of Sri Lanka. Of course this was done after the two Left parties, especially the LSSP, had previously been considerably emasculated by the removal of a large constituency, the plantation workers, by the stratagem of denying the citizenship rights of the plantation Tamils. Thus the historic SLFP coalition with the Left in 1964, which then persisted in various forms up to the present day (at least until last week) was remarkably similar, in ethnic terms, to that of the new tie up with the JVP. True, the LSSP and CP at that time had an incomparably larger North-Eastern Tamil constituency than the JVP has today. The JVP hardly has any Tamil or Muslim constituency worth speaking of. But even in 1964, the ethnic divisions were showing, and the historic 'Coalition' link up between the SLFP and the Left was largely one limited to the confines of the Sinhala community. In fact that is the principal logic of the alliance forged by the SLFP with the JVP today: an alliance that annexes the rest of majority ethnic vote bank that is outside the SLFP fold and hostile to the UNP. This vote bank comprises primarily the most oppressed socio-economic sectors: the most marginalised Sinhalas in both economic terms as well as caste terms. If, in the early and mid twentieth century, the LSSP and CP articulated the interest of the most oppressed sectors that both the SLFP and the UNP could not reach, the JVP performs that role today. And that is why, even if the JVP seems to be abandoning its fealty to Marxism and a communist system, it can still be said to be making the important contribution of injecting a vitally needed articulation of the interests of social groups most marginalised by the current, post colonial capitalist social system. This 'injection' will certainly not suffice to socially uplift those oppressed social classes and caste groups from their current status at the bottom of the Sri Lankan social heap. Sri Lankan capitalism and global capitalism will not provide for that social liberation. However, just as the LSSP and CP did in their hey day, today, the hope is that the JVP will bring just that amount of social articulation into the policy mainstream that will at least ensure that these oppressed social groups will not be totally ignored. It could mean a modicum of social and economic policy that will not see a wholesale reduction of the poor to starvation levels as in other parts of the modern world. Hence, the loud pronouncements on 'social democracy' by the SLFP spokesmen last week together with vague references to Anthony Gidans' (sic) 'Third Way'. I am sure that Rohana Wijeweera and the rest of the original JVP leadership would cringe at such espousal of what could hardly even be called Left 'revisionism', since the New Labour discourse that Giddens expands on is not even considered 'Left'. 'Leftist' or not, the hope is that the entrance of the JVP into the fringes of governance will modulate the current crude mix of raw, post colonial capitalism and feudalism. But this may be a false hope. After all the 1960s 'Coalition' exercise by the LSSP/CP was seemingly inadequate in ensuring the accommodation of the interests of the most marginalised social sectors. That is why, by 1970 the JVP had emerged as the militant Left and by 1971 these social layers had exploded in armed insurrection. It is the continuation of this socio-economic oppression that provides the basis for the continuation of the JVP itself today even after its Second Insurgency saw the near total extermination of its original leadership. Today these oppressed social forces are, once again, being accommodated on the fringes of governance and the policy mainstream. But, just as history is being repeated in the form of a new SLFP-Left alliance, will the failure of the previous alliance with the Left be repeated? As Marx has noted, history does not simply repeat itself. There are always new factors or different combinations of factors. Like, for example, the ideological nature of the JVP. Neither is the JVP a rigidly orthodox Marxian movement like its Left forebears, the LSSP and CP, nor does it have the same practise of internal democracy and strict collectivist procedures that characterised the Old Left in its hey day. Note the provision for a 'Leader' in the structure of the new SLFP-JVP alliance, something unheard of in the collectivised democracy of genuinely socialist or communist movements (and I am not referring to the Stalinist states exemplified by the USSR and China). That difference in internal party structures can be seen in the non-repetition of one aspect of the famous 1964 SLFP-Left Coalition. 1964 was a watershed for the Sri Lankan Left in that the LSSP's link up with the SLFP prompted a major split within the LSSP. A string of second rung leaders and their factions broke away to form their own Marxist parties: Bala Tampoe, Edmund Samarakkody and the Kamkaru Maavatha group being the most notable. Again, the 1970s SLFP-Left Coalition saw the Vaama Sama Samaja faction led by Vasudeva Nanayakkara break away from the LSSP. There is no indication at all of any dissonance within the JVP because of the alliance with the SLFP, especially nothing that could cause any splits. In that sense the JVP may be mirroring the monolithic and bureaucratic authoritarianism characteristic of Stalinism and also characteristic of mainstream bourgeois political parties. Thus, what Comrade Tilvin & Co. mean when they talk of introducing a 'democratic capitalism' is unclear to say the least and even ominous if one's conception of Democracy is comprehensive enough to see the grave limitations of capitalist democracy. Just as the JVP is vague about its social policies and conception of democracy, it is even more vague, or actually self-contradictory about its approach to the most serious aspect of the general crisis of Sri Lankan society: the ethnic conflict. This confusion could be seen even in the policy outlook of Rohana Wijeweera himself, if one is to go by his major theoretical work ('major' only terms of Sri Lanka's general mediocrity) published by the JVP in the early 1980s but now out of circulation and, perhaps, even suppressed by the party which has abandoned even the few Marxian-secularist formulations of Wijeweera in relation to the ethnic question. In that book (I forget the exact title), Wijeweera agreed categorically with Lenin's and Stalin's formulations on the ethnic question, formulations which are respectable and useful even today. Having done so, however, Wijeweera failed to recognise the working of these formulations in the Sri Lankan context and, indeed, went on to deny the 'right of self-determination' to the Tamil people and the need to fundamentally restructure the State to accommodate parallel ethnic nationalisms. At least, however, Wijeweera did reject explicit Sinhala-centred nationhood and also rejected links between the State and any religion. Indeed, he makes history in being the first (and only) major Sri Lankan Leftist leader to make a detailed (a whole chapter) attack on the Sri Lanka Buddhist Sangha establishment. He rejects the Sangha as being a 'corrupt', 'feudal' and 'undemocratic' institution. Perhaps this clean cut secularism is embarrassing to the JVP today as it slowly but surely gets on to the Sinhala ultranationalist bandwagon in its quest for votes and parliamentary seats. The gradual immersion of the JVP in Sinhala ultranationalism could be seen in the systematic avoidance by the JVP of any explicit, detailed formulations on the ethnic question (ever since the publication and subsequent suppression of Wijeweera's book) over the past decade. And the downgrading of the ethnic conflict to just one of several issues in the new alliance Memorandum of Understanding signed last week is also discouraging to those who see the ethnic war as the most urgent national problem. Positive implications I would hesitate to be that pessimistic. The very fact that the new alliance means the absorption of the JVP-led Sinhala social forces into the political mainstream does have positive implications for the politics of the ethnic conflict. In linking up with the SLFP the JVP has already come far in its recognition of the need to talk with the LTTE. Furthermore, the very fact that the JVP has moved quickly to disassociate itself from Somavansa Amarasinghe's clumsy formulations in his recent interview, in which he rejects ethnic power sharing structures, is also a positive sign. Just as much as the peace process has pushed the LTTE away from its own extreme position of secession, it is eminently possible that the 'domestication' of the JVP courtesy Chandrika Kumaratunga could see that powerful, Sinhala-based movement bring much of its constituency into a policy mainstream that accommodates ethnic power sharing. Success in that could just tip the balance in favour of constitutional reform for the purpose of a political settlement of the ethnic conflict. But one cannot construe that far. For such constitutional reform to take place, there has to be a working agreement and, a systematic one at that, with the UNP. That is, this trend of coalition-building cannot end with the new alliance between the SLFP and JVP. If the new alliance is not to be merely a repetition of history, and another bloody one too, it is imperative that some of form of collaboration is established with the UNP for the purpose of the peace process. That depends on the basic intentions underlying the new SLFP-JVP alliance. While, on the one hand, the new alliance can rightfully have competitive parliamentary political objectives, a failure to extend some aspects of this political cooperation to include, for the purpose of the peace process, collaborations with, at least, the UNP, the LSSP, CP, and the main Muslim and Tamil parties, will be a stark betrayal of the larger national interest. Such a betrayal will be proof, again, of the continuing failure of Sri Lankan civililisation to recover from its colonial trauma. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
