Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

By N Sathiya Moorthy

Sad but true, it has taken Donald John Trump in the distant US to bring all Sri Lankan political parties and their leaders together, to sit up and think alike at least on one single topic under the sun. After the economic crisis, Trump?s tariff-hikes are something on which every Sri Lankan is concerned about and every other Sri Lankan knows little about ? and understands even less, if explained.

That way, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his JVP party colleagues from within the larger NPP ruling coalition should be looking at the mirror on their walls. They were the ones who consistently and repeatedly used to boycott every all-party meeting or mechanism called by a succession of governments before theirs, without giving any convincing reason.

In office today, with the power of elected power trying to pull them downwards all the time, the JVP leadership would have understood what an all-party meeting in a given context means for the nation and its people. And how they had been foolish enough to say ?no? to every invite for every such endeavour by every government before this one, without possibly reading the full import of the invite or the issues and concerns that caused such invitation in the first place.

The last of the JVP?s rejection of a government invitation for an all-party meeting was when then President RanilWickremesinghe called one to brief them all on the IMF conditionalities. They all were concerned, genuinely and otherwise, and were shouting down the Government, both inside and outside Parliament, wanting to know more about those conditionalities. Yet, not one of them would accept the invitation.

The lone exception was then ITAK parliamentarian M A Sumanthiran, who had come prepared, with voluminous files in his hands. Earlier too, when then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was caught in the quagmire of an economic crisis (and put the nation and the people there without their knowing it), Sumanthiran had taken the maiden initiative of calling all Opposition party leaders for a couple of conclave to try and work out a solution.

Of course, there were those habitual absenteeism, including the JVP, and the SJB. The same applied to the all-party meeting called by President Wickremesinghe. The JVP boycotted both, as if by habit. The SJB did so because Raniltoo was either involved or was sending out the invitations as the Head of State, Head of Government and all the paraphernalia attending on the office he then held.

At the end of the day, video visuals of Sumanthiran?s meeting with the officials with no minister present, looked funny and at times misleading. Here was a meeting where a host of senior officials were present, but with a solitary man sitting across. Down the line, the picture could be misinterpreted as all those officials interrogating Sumanthiran on one issue or the other, or all the issues for which he was the possible cause (in the eyes of the purveyor of those visuals down the years).

Beyond resurrection

Earlier, this had been the case when President Mahinda Rajapaksa appointed the Tissa Vitharana Committee under an ethnically non-partisan incumbent minister from the centre-left political disposition. The JVP came from a similar ideological background. It had even shared power for a time in the first of the two MahindaGovernments. Earlier, the party had been a coalition partner, sharing ministerial positions also with Mahinda?s estranged party boss and predecessor President Chandrika Bandaranaike-Kumaratunga, CBK.

Rather, the JVP?s mainstreaming after the tumultuous and self-destructive ?insurgency? phases of what essentially began as a centre-left people?s movement owed to their joining hands with the CBK-led SLFP. Their sole aim then was to dislodge the ruling UNP of the JRJ-Premadasa, Sr, vintage, the latter especially having broken their insurgent creed beyond recognition and possible resurrection.?

Maybe, it will be worth the ruling combine?s mandate that they now take bold to acknowledge their mistakes from the past. No, it?s not about a cleansing process or anything like it. Instead, letting of the baggage from the past to go adrift will help them not to look over their shoulders all the time when replying or otherwise responding to criticism about their governmental conduct on policies, programmes and issues.

That is to say, they need to begin on a clean slate, unconnected with their militant / insurgent past. For them to be seen as a government that is futuristic and in action all the time, they have to be here, now and in the future. They cannot be in their isolated past, where they were alone and lonely, cut off from the rest of the nation?s polity and the rest of the country and its people.

It?s this loneliness and solitariness that may have encouraged, rather, induced them to take to insurgency in the first place. Devoid of a second or a third opinion that?s contradictory to the ?mainline thinking? that is all the time fed from the top, they might have done it differently, done it better and might have been in power very long ago. Their insurgency and mindless killing of fellow-Sri Lankans made them the ?hate object? of their southern brethren, at times even more than the LTTE elsewhere.

Rather, at the time of the two JVP insurgencies of the early seventies and late eighties, the LTTE was still finding its terrorist feet, learning their tricks, all of which had a devastating effect on the nation as a whole to this very day. The JVP?s contribution in the matter in its time was no less only that the nation has forgotten and forgiven them for all ? but not the LTTE. The reasons are more ethnic than ideological.

?Maybe, the JVP began well with taking bold on the IMF conditionalities once they slipped into the shoes of those that their political rivals from the past, and the present, had worn for decades. The coalition government has concluded yet another consultation with the visiting IMF team, and no one has taken note, one way or the other.

The criticisms from the JVP government?s first consultations round with the IMF were embarrassing for the rulers. The political and ideological critics of the time are now indifferent. Yes, they too have been shocked by the Trump tariffs, and some of them may even be feeling relieved that they are not in government just now.

On other fronts, too, the JVP is opening up. Not only has the DissanayakeGovernment, for instance, signed seven MoUs with the northern Indian neighbour, against feeble criticism from traditional / peripheral India-baiters nearer home. In a way, even the JVP which was only in the periphery until it came to power is now handling India one-on-one, as a sovereign government with all the pluses and minuses that have been part of a State?s being.

Thus, JVP ideologue and party general secretary Tilvin Silva has taken bold to ?defend? the MoUs with India, declaring that they have to leave the past behind at some point. As if apologetically and on the defensive, he has also said that ?India has changed?.

Does it actually mean that ?India has changed?, or is it that the JVP (too) has changed? Does it also mean that India was always like this, and the JVP had looked at India with a jaundiced eye as some others are now doing when they are in power?

All of it boils down only to the dictum, ?Mirror, mirror on the wall?? ? isn?t it? Does it also mean that while correcting themselves, the JVP also has the responsibility to correct others, convince others, going way all the way down to the last Sri Lankan, they having been the mainstay of the previous processes for decades together?

(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)