The SLFP and the JVP are notorious for their Duminda-Anarkali type relationship. They opt for cohabitation from time to time but exchange more blows than smooches.

Today, the Rajapaksa government has gone to KO Rathu Sahodarayas, who brought it to power and had a brief honeymoon with it. In return for the services they rendered, they have got assaults and kalu thel (burnt engine oil) attacks from their erstwhile friends. We have a lot of dirty linen being washed by both parties in public and the attendant stench has become nauseating. The latest episode in the Rajapaksa-Somawansa saga is the unleashing of the CID on two JVP MPs over their alleged links with a Tiger operative who conspired to assassinate the Prime Minister. The JVP has dubbed the CID probe a political witch-hunt.

The plot of the unfolding political drama looks somewhat skewed. The government argues that since it was the JVP that appointed the LTTE suspect a director of the Sri Lanka Film Corporation, the JVP has Tiger links! When one points a finger at another, it is said, the other fingers are pointed towards oneself. The JVP made the appointment at issue as a coalition partner of the UPFA government. Therefore, the government cannot absolve itself of the responsibility for that appointment and having those two JVP MPs in its ranks initially. Had the JVP accepted President Mahinda Rajapaksa's offer to rejoin the government, the UPFA and those two JVP parliamentarians with alleged Tiger links would still have been together.

Animosity of the two parties has had various manifestations. On the political front, the JVP attempted to avenge the belittlement it suffered at the hands of the SLFP by making governance impossible in the North Central and Sabaragamuwa provinces. It reduced the UPFA to a minority administration in both provinces by pulling out support. And the reaction of the government was to dissolve them and call fresh polls thus wrong-footing the JVP, which may have expected a pariwasa arrangement in those councils, where it could hold the UPFA to ransom as in 2001, when the Kumaratunga government was at the mercy of the JVP for survival in Parliament before its collapse.

Hoist with its own petard, the JVP reeling from a disastrous split went all out to have the PC polls put off and buy time but in vain. Its failure to avoid polls led to a hasty decision to flex muscles on the trade union front in a bid to bring the government to its knees. Thus, it may be seen that the July 10 strike is more a political battle than a real trade union struggle of workers. The 5,000-rupee demand is the carrot that the JVP is dangling before workers desperate for relief.

That the demand for a pay hike is only a façade is evident from the so-called compromise formula that the JVP has proposed. JVP trade union wing leader and MP Lal Kantha has put forth some conditions for giving up trade union action: Implementation of the 17th Amendment, slashing the Cabinet down to 30, reducing the number of presidential advisors to 30, doing away with snap PC polls and reducing bus and train fares. Interestingly, none of those demands is a viable alternative to Rs. 5,000 and they run counter to the reason the JVP has given for the strike––inability of the workers to survive on their current salaries. Only the condition that the bus and train fares be reduced has to do with some pecuniary benefit to the people. But they cannot live by reduced transport fares alone. The other conditions are beneficial to the public but it is doubtful whether they will translate into immediate financial relief to the people who are demanding an instant remedy. A reduction in the number of ministers will certainly help cut down on government expenditure but that alone won't be sufficient to bring any substantial relief to the people.

By demanding the cancellation of snap PC polls the JVP has betrayed its real motive in having called a strike. The JVP's election phobia is only too well known. It cannot go it alone at any election without suffering a humiliating defeat and exposing its real strength. But for the PR system of voting, it would have hardly had any representation in Parliament. Instead of condemning President J. R. Jayewardene posthumously, Rathu Sahodarayas should, in fact, frame his picture, hang it at their party headquarters and worship it three times a day. For, it is JRJ who introduced the PR system which has stood them in good stead today.

The Jumbos have sought to fish in troubled waters by throwing in their lot with the JVP in the strike despite the fact that they crushed a strike in 1980 and threw thousands of workers out of jobs.

Ironically, the JVP, which had a UNP-led government sacked in 2004 on the grounds that it had become a threat to national security and went all out to ensure that party's defeat at the 2004 general election and at the 2005 presidential polls, claiming that it had ruined the country and was helping the LTTE, is now in league with the UNP to topple the UPFA government! And the government has in its ranks a group of prominent UNPers who led the Opposition battle to prevent Mahinda Rajapaksa from becoming President! Friends have become foes and foes friends!

The UNP, which says snap PC polls have led to an utter waste of public funds, is demanding a premature general election! (Is it that a general election is less expensive than PC polls?)

Meanwhile, the SLFP, which together with the traditional left led workers to an abortive strike in 1980, caused them to lose their jobs and condemned the JVP for having pulled out support at the last moment, is now denouncing the Opposition for tomorrow's strike, which, we are being told, is an attempt to sabotage its war effort!