After the handing in of nominations and the setting of a date for the NCP and Sabaragamuwa elections, all eyes are on the NCP. Sabaragamuwa has become a political backwater without even a clearly designated chief ministerial candidate from the main opposition party. The NCP is where the battle of the titans will take place. The UNP has fielded Janaka Perera whose main claim to fame is his record as a military officer. But in this he does not have a monopoly, because the government that he will be contesting also has a good military track record. In the Rajapakse administration, JP has met his match, and it is this unusual leveling of the playing field between the UNP and the PA, that has turned the NCP into such a keen contest.

What the NCPC election will be like, is the question on most people’s minds today. Even before nominations were handed over there were two cases of assault reported – one was an incident involving supporters of the NCPC opposition leader who were putting up posters. This can’t really be considered a serious incident, because this kind of altercation takes place even among employees of tuition masters competing for the same wall space. But the other attack, on Sanath Kulawardhana, the leader of the opposition of the Welikanda Pradesheeys Sabha, is more serious. Some men had gone to his house, claiming to be police and had wanted to search the place. Instead of searching the premises, they had assaulted Kulawardhana and left. This young man has been the most combative UNP politician in the Polonnaruwa district and has spent many months in jail on suspicion of plotting to assassinate Minister Maithripala Sirisena. Kulawardhana who has also been the chairman of the Dimbulagala Pradesheeya Sabha is the son of R.M.Ranmenike, a UNP Provincial Councilor for 14 years, who also served as the deputy chairperson of the council. Once he was in jail for over one year on suspicion of being in cahoots with the LTTE.

In stark contrast to the businessman Earl Gunasekera who is the UNP’s lone parliamentarian in the Polonnaruwa ditrict, Kulawardhana has been doing something to get noticed even in a negative way. His mother, Ranmenike, herself was a firebrand in her day. A journalist recounts how he was sitting one day in 1994 in the waiting room at President’s House reading a newspaper when suddenly, the entire room seemed to go dark. Looking up, he saw Ranmenike, the then deputy chairperson of the NCPC, face black with fury, and literally crackling with indignation at not having been given nominations to contest the 1994 August parliamentary election. She had come to give President D.B.Wijetunga a piece of his mind.

So this assault on Kulawardhana may be interpreted as an attempt to intimidate this aggressive UNP political family in Polonnaruwa. Up to now, one of the reasons why President Rajapakse has been able to play Mr Nice Man, is because there has been no real challenge to his rule from the UNP. The acid test will be whether he can continue to be benign, in the face of a serious challenge.

With Janaka Perera leading the NCP campaign, we will know whether President Rajapakse’s geniality is genuine or simply an aberration due to the lack of a real challenge. As of now, even though there may be some journalists living in fear, there is no UNPer that this writer knows of who is living in fear of the Rajapakse regime – a stark contrast to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s first seven years of power which was one long nightmare for most UNPers and most of all for Ranil Wickremesinghe. The president himself is a good public relations man and is usually non-confrontational in his approach. After being ensconced in power, Rajapakse has by and large done nothing serious against the main opposition UNP or the other parties in the opposition like the JVP.

The manner in which the government will fight this election, is a moot point. Last week, some PA candidates from the NCP, who met the president bad mouthed Janaka Perera, but the president had told them that they should not denigrate a war hero. The president has an instinct for this kind of thing. He had described Janaka Perera as a Vidiye Bandara, the Sinhalese folk hero, the father of King Dharmapala of Kotte, who was with the Portuguese and then turned against them and finally met his death in Nallur when he went to seek the aid of the Tamil king who had received him cordially. But an accidental explosion during a pooja at the Nallur kovil had led to a melee in which Vidiye Bandara was cut down on suspicion of treachery.

It was only after the death of Vidiye Bandara that King Dharmapala was converted to Catholicism and became a puppet of the Portuguese. This analogy with a Sinhalese folk hero who met his death at the hands of a Jaffna based King would strike many people as quite ominous because the security angle with regard to Janaka Perera’s candidacy was always a paramount consideration. Even the Sunday Leader had editorially posed the question whether JP would be allowed to live to make a difference. This is not to say that the government would make an attempt on his life. What people have on their minds is the LTTE and what they did to General Lucky Algama. In 1999, the LTTE made an attempt on Chandrika Kumaratunga’s life perhaps with the intention of ensuring Ranil Wickremesinghe’s victory, but at the same time, they assassinated the man whom they feared would take over the UNP’s defense portfolio in the event of victory. If the UNP was going to win, it would have to be without Algama.

The LTTE has reason to fear JP for the same reasons that they feared Algama – that he will effect a change in the UNP’s attitude towards the war and the LTTE. Given what is possible, the government had better do something to bolster JP’s security. Perera is now a soft target for the LTTE. Given the fact that the LTTE have been reduced to placing bus bombs just to spite the Sinhalese, they would be overjoyed at being able to hit a major target like JP. A hit like that could demoralize society and even affect morale within the armed forces. It is the government’s duty to ensure that whoever has done battle with the LTTE and come out on top, should not be allowed to fall prey to the LTTE’s suicide cadres if it can help. There would be some in the government who would argue that they can’t help it if JP has decided to put his life on line by getting into politics and that he will be entitled to the security normally given to any provincial council candidate. They did that to T. Maheswaran. He was assassinated and the government had to take the blame for reducing his security detail to that of an ordinary MP.

Before the 1989 February parliamentary elections, the then UNP government distributed weapons even to the SLFP to protect themselves against the JVP. Even though the SLFP was opposed to the UNP at the election, the common enemy at that time was the JVP which had banned the election. Similarly, vis-a-vis the Rajapakse regime, Janaka Perera is an opponent but the common enemy is the LTTE. This is also an opportunity for the government to demonstrate that they respect war heroes no matter which side of the political divide they may be on. If personnel cannot be spared, JP should at least be issued with a significant number of weapons to arm his private security guards as Ranjan Wijeratne did for the SLFP in 1989. These weapons can be withdrawn after the election.

The same argument with regard to the Pillaiyan group to the effect that they needed guns to protect themselves against the LTTE, applies in equal measure to JP and it is hoped for their own sake, that the government will not only be even handed but also seen by the public to be even handed. Such an act can in fact be turned to the government’s own propaganda advantage because among the Sinhalese nobody does meritorious deeds without plenty of publicity.

The public meeting held by the newly formed JNP at Nugegoda last week was a flop as could be expected. When even their parent organization was finding it difficult to muster a crowd to commemorate their April heroes day, as happened this year, it is hardly surprising that a break away faction would be finding it difficult to draw crowds to its meetings. Unlike the JVP proper which still has its countrywide organization intact, Wimal Weerawansa’s JNP depends on those disgruntled with the JVP for a crowd. And the newly formed party still does not have a grassroots organization spread out through the country to bus supporters to Colombo for public events. The fact of the matter is that the JVP and its offshoots are today no longer relevant to the public. For Weerawansa, Nandana Gunatilleke and others who broke away from the JVP to form the JNP, this parting of ways may be a major event in their lives. But the formation of yet another splinter party is certainly of little interest to the public.

Even though the JNP was unsuccessful in its public debut, the book published by Weerawansa entitled "Ettha wenuwata nettha" was an instant hit. This can be described as the most interesting piece of Sinhala political writing since Victor Ivan’s "Choura Regina". Weerawansa’s book consists of a reproduction of several internal documents of the JVP written mainly by himself, Tilvin Silva and Somawansa Amarasinghe. The authenticity of these documents have been indirectly admitted by Tilvin Silva himself when he described the book as a theft of intellectual property belonging to the JVP. Weerawansa’s book gives the public a glimpse of the JVP’s internal workings in the post 1994 era as never before. In almost every other political party, the goings on in the highest decision making bodies is public knowledge, with journalists having easy access to inside information through their contacts. But with regard to the JVP, the newspapers know only what the JVP has officially decided to tell them.

In that sense, the JVP has been and still is the least transparent political party of them all. Yet, from what Weerawansa’s book reveals, there is some degree of internal democracy within the JVP. There is free discussion and free expression of views within the politburo and central committee with the party leader being only the first among equals when the highest decision making bodies are in session. And unlike any other party, in the JVP the leader’s opinion may not always hold sway. When Somawansa Amarsinghe returned to Sri Lanka in the year 2000 after ten years in self imposed exile in the west, a beaming Weerawansa was photographed at the Katunayake airport pushing Amarasinghe’s luggage trolley. Weerawansa is still pushing that luggage trolley for Amarasinghe. Apart from the need to explain to the public the reasons for the JVP split, one of the express objectives of his book was to ensure that justice was done to Somawansa Amarasinghe as well.

As the daily Island editorially pointed out, other parties split because of defeat and failure but the JVP split was due to their inability to manage its success. That indeed is what comes across in Weerawansa’s book. The split took place over the question of whether to join or not to join the Rajapakse government. Weerawansa states that by 2005, the JVP’s brief experience in government in 2004 had created a situation where most members of the central committee had got into an anti-coalition government state of mind. When it came to the question of whether the JVP was going to contest the presidential election of 2005, this anti-coalition government mentality had been one of the determining factors which led to the half baked decision the JVP took to support Mahinda Rajapakse’s candidacy without joining his government in the event of a victory. Weerawansa states that by that time the majority in the central committee had decided that instead of entering into coalition governments with the SLFP, the JVP should follow the path of unadulterated class struggle and Marxist orthodoxy.

It must be noted in this context that entering into an understanding with the SLFP was not necessarily a recent innovation as far as the JVP was concerned. As far back as the first half of 1983, in the months before the JVP was proscribed following the July anti-Tamil riots, the JVP which was then under Rohana Wijeweera’s leadership was definitely veering towards establishing an understanding with the SLFP. When the JVP went to courts against J.R.Jayewardene’s 1982 presidential election victory, their lawyer was none other than Felix Dias Bandaranaike, the bete noir of the JVP, the man who was responsible for the crushing of the 1971 JVP insurgency and the promulgation of the Criminal Justice Commissions Act under which the JVP suspects were tried and punished. The newspapers published a photograph of a beaming Wijeweera shaking hands with Felix Dias after handing over the election petition.

At the local government elections held in 1983 too, there were moves by the JVP to enter into an understanding with the SLFP. In fact, had the JVP not been proscribed in July 1983 and had they been able to continue in democratic politics, Wijeweera’s JVP would have ended up joining hands with the SLFP.

In the old days Wijeweera held a pre-eminent place in the JVP and what he said was basically the party policy. There may have been a discussion but the final word was his. In the post 1990 JVP however, what seems to happen is a more collegial form of leadership with Amarasinghe not having the final say. This is a curious fact because Amarasinghe is by far the most senior of those who survived the failed insurrection of 1989. He is one of the few who have continued in the party from pre-1971 days. Even though there is the impression in some quarters that Premakumar Gunaratnam, the younger brother of Ranjitham Gunaratnam, a student leader of the JVP who was killed in 1989, is the real leader of the JVP, that does not seem to be likely, because Ranjitham himself was far below Amarsinghe in the party hierarchy. Amarasinghe was a central committee member and the foreign affairs secretary when Ranjitham was the student leader of Peradeniya University in the 1980s. So its very unlikely that this man’s younger brother could be holding a place higher than that of Amarasinghe.

Hence the only reason for the collegial form of leadership and consensus decision making that seems to prevail in the JVP is the personality of Amarasinghe. The present columnist has said previously that a Weerawansa was possible in the post-1990 JVP only because of Amarasinghe and that under Wijeweera there would have been no Weerawansa. Wijeweera was the type of leader who would brook no one who could outshine him in the public eye. Amarasinghe, in contrast, had a whole new crop of younger leaders all of whom outshone him in the public eye. Weerawansa was the foremost of that brand of new young leaders. Under Amarashinge’s stewardship, the JVP rose to heights that could only be dreamt of by its founder. Wijeweera aspired to lead a mass party but he remained always the leader of a fringe group; whereas, Amarasinghe almost managed to turn the JVP into a mainline political party, a third player nearly as influential as the UNP and the SLFP.

What Weerawansa’s book reveals is that Amarasinghe missed reaching this goal not due to any lack of sagacity on his part, but due to the collegial form of leadership that he himself had introduced to the post 1990 JVP. Its ironic that at the very moment when there is ferment within the UNP asking for a more collegial form of leadership, and there is a section of the party that says that the UNP has been laid low due to the lack of intra party democracy, Weerawansa shows how the internal democracy within the JVP has resulted in a reversal of the JVP’s fortunes.

The JVP, being a Marxist party, took internal discussion very seriously, and members of the central committee and politburo often presented papers to the decision making bodies which were circulated and were supposed to be handed back to the party. In one such internal document authored by Somawansa Amarasinghe after the presidential elections of 2005, he has said that it was correct of the party to have supported Mahinda Rajapakse at the presidential election but that it was wrong not to have joined a coalition government under Rajapakse.

Amarasinghe has admitted that before the presidential elections he too had held the opinion that Mahinda should be supported by the JVP but that the party should not join in a coalition government. That decision was wrong. The JVP should have made use of the opportunity available to form a coalition government. In Amarasinghe’s written representations to the party, he had even described the act of not joining the Rajapakse government as a case of playing the role of a political Siri Sangabo – the Buddhist King who is said to have given his head to acquire merit in his next birth.

The other JVP leader whose written representations are included in Weerawansa’s book is Tilvin Silva who emerges as the leader of the conservative majority within the JVP central committee. Silva urged that the JVP should have nothing to do with a coalition government with the SLFP. Many veiled insults were exchanged during this debate between Weerawansa, Somawansa and Tilvin. One passage from a written representation made by Tilvin goes as follows:

"It is in unique circumstances that we had to work to rebuild the party after 1994. In a situation where the leadership with a long experience of class struggle had been destroyed, and comrade Somawansa was overseas, the party had to be rebuilt by a group of novices, inexperienced in class struggle and leadership. This brought both advantages and disadvantages to the party. The advantage was that new faces facilitated an adjustment to the new political situation. The disadvantages were their lack of experience in class struggle and their lack of Marxist theoretical knowledge."

Some parts of these written submissions make delectable reading. The ‘novices’ who had no experience of class struggle or any knowledge of Marxism that Silva refers to are obviously the likes of Weerawansa. In fact, this columnist has pointed out in previous articles that in the post 1990 period one almost never heard of Marx or Lenin from the lips of any JVP leader including Tilvin Silva. This lack of Marxist rhetoric was in fact a key feature of the new face of the JVP which proved to be so popular.

Somawansa Amarasinghe had written a rejoinder to Silva where he had bluntly said that trying to give primacy to the class struggle as Silva wanted will end up with the JVP becoming another fringe political party like the Nava Sama Samaja Party. Even after the majority of the central committee adopted the stand advocated by Tilvin Silva, Amarasinghe didn’t give up. He wrote yet another missive to the central committee where he said that Tilvin Silva’s submission had not struck a balance between theory on the one hand and practical strategies and tactics on the other. He ends up calling Tilvin a ‘fundamentalist’ (muladharmavadiyek).