Sri Lanka | Dilemmas of a radical past governing a bourgeois present

The victory of Anura Kumara Dissanayake as President of Sri Lanka is symbolic in many ways. A political party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), translated as Peoples Liberation Front, bearing the symbol of hammer and sickle, in alliance with many other parties has won the September 22 presidential elections.

In 2019, the National People's Power (NPP) (or Jathika Jana Balawegaya (JJB)) was established with Dissanayake, the JVP leader at the helm. Historically, the JVP tried to capture State power through militant struggle in 1971 and 1987, but saw a decline thereafter. Fred Halliday argued that the mass mobilisation of the 1970s revolt was such that “the international line-up of support for the Ceylonese Government represented a wider and more advanced degree of international counter-revolutionary intervention than has been seen anywhere else to date”.

After decades, the JVP has bounced back with a change in political strategy, a change in political understanding, and changes in governance goals. More importantly, it is now leading an alliance of around two dozen political parties, unlike its earlier days as a well-disciplined Left force.

This is a momentous occasion because after Nepal, Sri Lanka is only the second nation to have a Leftist leader as the president, and this is more than symbolic. It remains to be seen whether Sri Lanka follows Nepal, where the Left is no longer discernible from any other liberal bourgeois politics, or it presents an alternative model of resistance against neoliberal accumulative practices.

The Sri Lankan economic crisis, widespread internal corruption leading to massive outflow of capital, and corporate houses from neighbouring countries and beyond robbing the country created material conditions that led to the protests in Colombo and across Sri Lanka. The anger was not built overnight. Analysts pointed out that the outflow was happening and how the ‘foreign exchange crisis was brewing over the last 10 to 20 years. We have to also point out the fact that this outflow is about 80% of the debt that we have defaulted on’. 

What journalists unearthed in terms of money flying off to foreign destinations by the Rajapakse family was only the tip of the iceberg. It was not only the immediate mismanagement that created the crisis; this was in the making. Whether the Dissanayake-led government will be able to diagnose what went wrong and take corrective measures remains to be seen.

The masses may not be aware of the economic regime that led to the crisis, but they realised that the existing political forces facilitated the crisis and the outright rejection of Ranil Wickremesinghe is a testimony to the same. The votes Wickremesinghe got were essentially from a tiny section which experienced stability and could create a false discourse of stability for the nation. The people overwhelmingly rejected his illusory strategic flamboyance. The voting outcome indicates a popular desire to give a historically anti-systemic politics a chance. This would also mean that the JVP has a huge task cut for them.

Unlike in other South Asian states, the Sri Lankan president seen in a red shirt has a lot of power. Chapter VIII through Articles 42-52 empowers a president to virtually run the government. It depends on the democratic sensibilities of the president and how much power he wants to concentrate on himself or devolve to the popularly elected Members of Parliament. The president is ‘a member of the Cabinet of Ministers and shall be the Head of the Cabinet of Ministers’. It is the president who appoints the prime minister who, in his opinion, “is most likely to command the confidence of Parliament”. He can “determine the number of Ministers of the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministries and the assignment of subjects and functions to such Ministers”.

The NPP election document titled ‘A Thriving Nation A Beautiful Life’ talks of “education, health, and transportation as essential public services and plans to increase resource allocation in all these fields. We believe that education is a primary responsibility of the government, and therefore, we commit to reducing the burden of education placed on parents.” The coalition wants to spend 6% of GDP on education.

Their health policy would focus “on increasing financial allocations to the public health sector to develop it as an effective public service." Sri Lanka has been known for its abundant natural resources, which have been depleting. The new government wants to address this when it says that it “will move away from anthropocentric thinking that places man as the sole owner of the earth, which conflicts with nature and aims to co-exist with all elements of the environment to maintain the balance of ecosystems.”

In an attempt to redefine governance, the NPP document says that “for the first time in Sri Lanka’s post-independence history, governance will shift from the control of a few corrupt elite families to a people’s government.” The new president had said that “a politics that leads to an era of complete transformation will emerge on September 21”. The nation, which voted them to power, would definitely await that transformation.

The IMF has put its conditions on Pakistan. In Pakistan, it has asked for an increase in tax and the parliament passed tax-heavy Budget and also moved towards ending subsidies. Studies have pointed out how structural adjustments trap people in poverty, tend to increase the costs of basic services, and destroy social security programmes. The document indicates that it wants to safeguard the interests of common people but how would it wade through the hostile waters of IMF and predatory corporations that are deep inside its territory?

The JVP has no doubt moved beyond what Policy Declaration of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, drafted in the early 1970s said, and which was quoted by Lionel Bopage. The document critiqued ‘bourgeois governments’ post-independence for treading ‘the same bankrupt path of capitalist development under the guise of ‘Democratic Socialism’ or ‘Socialist Democracy’....Whilst the working class and the oppressed mass of the people have been further weakened and reduced economically, politically and socially during the last three decades, foreign imperialist monopolies and their collaborators, the dependent national bourgeoisie, have enriched and expanded themselves in privilege.’

But now the NPP moves ahead and includes in its election manifesto elements such as ‘promote long-term foreign investments in public-private-people partnerships (PPPP) by prioritising strategically important sectors.’ The challenge before the new government will be to build an ideological framework that shows some semblance of their past, also adjusts to the present tactically and plans on policies that safeguards the right to dissent, and academic freedom, and create employment without falling into a debt trap.

The JVP-led alliance cannot enact a revolution transforming the social structure. However, the question is how effectively can it counter the neoliberal tendencies of authoritarianism and distribution of wealth, making health and education of the best quality available to every Sri Lankan citizen, preventing the obscene accumulation of wealth as indicated by the increasing gap between a few rich and vast mass of poor.

Lastly, can it create an alternative model of governance that lies between the welfare State and an authoritarian neoliberal State? It can and it is possible. How it plans to do that remains a question for the future.

(Ravi Kumar is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, South Asian University. Author's X handle: @74kravi)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.