Wimal Weerawansa and the JVP

April 4th, 2008

By R.Venugopal

The suspension of Wimal Weerawansa, the JVP ’s public face and most popular leader is an event of immense signficance for the JVP and is fraught with possibility. Although the party is nominally headed by Somawansa Amarasinghe and General Secretary Tilvin Silva, it is Wimal who is the poster boy of the new JVP in its most recent avatar. Weerawansa is the party’s most brilliant orator: revered by the rank and file, and feared by his opponents. Weerawansa is closely associated with the JVP’s recent political transformation towards Sinhala nationalism in the post-2000 period, and particularly to the way in which the JVP captured the mantle of Sinhala nationalism in the course of opposition to the CFA and the Norwegian sponsored peace process.

[Wimal Weerawansa]

By the 2002-2003 period, Wimal had become a media sensation. Himself a former journalist, Wimal had for long held the deceptively humble title as the JVP’s media spokesperson. He was an exceptionally skilful performer in front of the camera, as his steely glare, his sharp, clinical style, and his immaculately coiffeured persona has since catapulted him to fame. In the long exile years of Somawansa Amarasinghe through the 1990-2004 period, it was Wimal, together with Tilvin Silva, who were the two top leaders of the JVP on the ground. And of these two, it was Wimal that dominated, at least on the public stage.

From 2003 onwards, Wimal has been the General Secretary of the Patriotic National Movement (PNM), an umbrella organization floated by the JVP at the height of their agitation against the Ranil Wickremasinghe government and the peace process. The PNM was effectively an openly Sinhala nationalist organization, and although it contained a number of leading JVP activists and fellow travellers, it also included a large number of outsiders, such as its Chairman Gunadasa Amarasekera. As head of the PNM, Wimal was presented a new platform to pursue his fiery Sinhala nationalism with some degree of independence from the organizational discipline and collective decision making of the JVP.

Tensions within the JVP have always existed, but have been skilfully kept away from the media eye due to the party’s culture of silence and discipline. There were a number of splits in the party in the 1993-96 period, mostly in the context of party reorganization and consolidation. In the aftermath of the party’s shattering defeat at the hands of the Premadasa government’s counter-terrorism in the 1989-90 period, the fragmented and leader-less remnants of the party naturally gravitated in different directions. While it was ultimately the Somawansa Amarasinghe faction, headed in exile from Paris, that gained control of the party brand name and held a national convention in 1995, there were at that point as many as five separate organizations calling themselves the JVP.

But what has been remarkable about the JVP, which went through a similar period of splintering in the post-1977 period, is that it has prevailed and steadily grown in size and significance. Tens of thousands have entered and exited the ranks of the JVP, but the party has survived. The JVP went from almost complete annihilation in 1990 to winning 1 MP in 1994; 10 MPs in 2000, 16 in 2001, and 39 in 2004. The JVP commands a steady 10%-20% of the Sinhalese vote, and has when contesting under the UPFA, attracted very high levels of preference votes compared to their SLFP colleagues. Much of the JVP’s present image and strength derives from their successful campaign against the peace process and the CFA - a campaign that caused them to mend fences with their old antagonist Mahinda Rajapakse, and to work energetically for his election as president in November 2005.

For the first year after the election, the JVP remained close supporters of Rajapakse, and were assumed to be the power behind his presidency. In actual fact, tensions between the JVP and Rajapakse always remained acute behind the façade of unity, and the JVP refused to actually join his government and re-assume the ministerial positions they had briefly accepted in April 2004. In the first half of 2006, the JVP impatiently goaded Rajapakse to an ever more radical, extreme and militarist stance against the LTTE and indeed achieved that objective. In the early days of fighting in mid-2006, Weerawansa was on several occasions deployed on speech tours of the troops on the front-lines, with his growing influence causing alarm even within Rajapakse’s own party.

But at the same time, while the JVP appeared to be at the peak of their powers in the midst of the military crisis of Maavil Aaru, Muttur, and Sampur in July-August 2006, the party continued to press the government for further extreme measures outlined in the ‘Mahinda Chinthanaya’ election manifesto that they had signed up to. As the price for joining the government and consolidating Rajapakse’s chronically weak base of parliamentary support, the JVP put forward a set of ultimatums including the formal abrogation of the CFA, and the removal of the Norwegian monitors. Rajapakse was not averse to these measures – indeed he has since implemented them, but in his own time, and when the military, political and international circumstances suited him. At that time, Rajapakse and many in his party were deeply unsettled at the JVP’s perpetual brinkmanship, and their uncompromising and confrontational style. A partnership in government with the JVP looked increasingly unappealing, and Rajapakse began looking elsewhere for parliamentary support.

Between late-2006 and early 2007, Rajapakse successfully finessed an extremely complicated political manoeuvre that finally won him the pliable parliamentary majority that he had sought. He simultaneously rid himself of the petulant JVP, won over a sizeable faction of defectors from the ailing UNP, and consolidated his position within his own party by expelling a small faction of opponents from within his own party led by former foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera.

As a result, by early 2007, the JVP found themselves in the extremely awkward position of opposing a government which they had helped elect into power, and whose policies they were closely identified with. Since 2002, the JVP had defined itself in terms of its campaign of opposition to the peace process, and to some extent, with opposition to market reforms. By appropriating both these policies, Rajapakse was effectively denying the JVP the political oxygen and the opportunity for populist fervour that had sustained them for over a decade.

Rajapakse’s primary political agenda item was the war against the LTTE. As long as the war remained successful, and appeared to be prosecuted aggressively, the JVP would struggle to find political traction. Not only could the JVP not oppose the war, but they could not even (as they had done under Chandrika in the late-1990s, or JR in the mid-1980s) complain that the war was not being pursued with enough determination. Life has been tough for the JVP under Rajapakse - for most of the past year, they have had to make do with the slim pickings yielded by issues such as corruption, the cost of living, or government wastage. Even here, the JVP has desisted from exerting their presence, for example by using their considerable union muscle. Indeed, the JVP has held back their unions from any serious strike action for fear that it would be seen as disrupting the economy and the war effort.

Rajapakse has also been an extremely skilful political manipulator, and has constantly out-manoeuvred the JVP by appropriating key elements of their agenda, and denying them an issue to fight him with. In 2007, Rajapakse produced groans of disappointment both within Sri Lanka and internationally with his primitive and clearly unacceptable proposals for power devolution. But this, and much else, has been done with a clear eye to the JVP, which has threatened to oppose and campaign against any meaningful proposals at power devolution - just as they did in August 2000 at former President Kumaratunga’s devolution bill.

To some extent, Rajapakse’s actions amount to a back-handed ideo-political victory for the JVP. Their entry into parliament since 2000 has effectively resulted in the elevation of their agenda into state policy. It has reversed the grand political tide towards greater acceptance of devolution that has been in motion since at least the Chandrika years. Negotiations with the LTTE are now completely off the agenda, as is any incremental devolution. The government has an actively hostile approach to the western donors, NGOs, and to absolutely any measure of the humanitarian intervention and human rights agenda. Similarly, Rajapakse has also not undertaken any major privatizations, and most market reforms remain frozen since 2004. All this is largely the handiwork of the JVP. To this extent, they have much cause for self satisfaction. But the ascendance of the JVP’s ideo-political agenda has paradoxically caused deep tensions within the organization itself, with a spate of high profile media reports about dissent at the top.

In 2006, the JVP’s erstwhile Presidential candidate from the 1999 elections, Nandana Gunathilake effectively left the party and spent almost a year in hiding, presumably abroad. There have also been persistent rumours in recent weeks that another MP, Sunil Handunetti was the subject of unusual disciplinary measures including some form of house arrest. The Handunetti affair came to a head, together with the present crisis over Wimal Weerawansa, in the wake of the budget vote in December 2007. A government that loses the vote on the budget must resign immediately - so that much more was at stake than the actual appropriations bill. The opposition parties, which have suffered much under Rajapakse, had gone to great lengths to coordinate amongst each other and to muster defections from the government benches in order to defeat the budget. Given the complex arithmetic of parliamentary support, the survival of the government ultimately came down to the issue of which way the JVP’s 37 MPs would vote.

There were heated debates on this issue within the JVP itself - and it is widely assumed that the sentiment within the party was to vote against. As an opposition party, the JVP was loath to keep the government afloat, but was under heavy pressure from Sinhala nationalist opinion not to cause the collapse of a ‘patriotic’ war-time government. What is interesting to note is that the Sinhala nationalist PNM, headed by Weerawansa, and which sponsors the soldier’s welfare organization, Manel Mel, which lobbied heavily for the JVP to support the government. There was tight secrecy over the JVP’s decision in the run-up to the actual vote, and the final decision was apparently communicated to the JVP MPs themselves only at the very last minute. Eventually, the JVP, which had voted against the budget on its second reading, had under heavy pressure, changed this on the critical third reading to abstaining. It was ultimately the JVP’s mass abstention that helped stem the tide of any latent desertion from the government benches, and helped preserve the government.

What emerged in the aftermath of the budget is that the PNM - the JVP’s own brainchild - has thus come to play an important role in pressuring the JVP to moderate its opposition to the government. This situation has caused embarrassment and irritation within the JVP leadership, and Weerawansa’s own leadership role within the PNM has thus placed him in the hot seat of contention. In the last two weeks, a new controversy over the PNM has placed Weerawansa openly at odds with the JVP’s position on the issue of paramilitary disarmament in the Eastern elections - and it is this issue which caused an unusually open display of rivalry within the JVP’s leadership ranks and precipitated Wimal’s fall.

From the perspective of Somawansa, Tilvin, Lalkantha and the other JVP leadership, Wimal Weerawansa has been cut down to size. They would ideally hope that he slides quietly into the background without a fuss, and without causing any negative vibes within the party - so that he could be rehabilitated and re-groomed for power in the future. But at this early stage, the situation remains fraught with unpredictable possibilities. Wimal is entirely a creation of the JVP, and is indeed the JVP’s poster-boy of an angry young man, so that it is difficult to conceive of him as thriving under any other political brand name. At the same time, his public persona is such that it would be difficult for him to fade from the public limelight. He has a large and loyal following within the party cadres, who must surely be confused by this unusual departure of their larger than life leader. The PNM has not spoken yet – but they must similarly be displeased with what amounts to a manoeuvre by the JVP against their organization. Meanwhile, the dissension within the JVP ranks is cause for grim satisfaction for the Rajapakse brothers, who would only wish for it to deepen and escalate. The ineffectiveness of the UNP as an opposition party has meant that the JVP poses a far more immediate and unpredicatable source of political threat.

Media reports over Weerawansa’s suspension have speculated over the personality clashes within the organization. Weerawansa is alleged to have been lured into the Rajapakse orbit through his friendship with the President’s brother, Basil. Within the JVP, opposition to the government centres around Tilvin Silva and Anura Kumar Dissanayake. The unresolved rumours over Sunil Handunetti’s house arrest, and the intimidation of his wife have scarcely died down. Nandana Gunathilake has added further fuel to fire by alleging that the JVP contains die-hard militants who are plotting for a return to armed struggle. But personalities aside, the problem within the JVP is a result of the party’s overall unease at the strange political circumstances that they find themselves in – and are effectively caught within a problem of their own making.

As a party of recovering revolutionaries, the JVP has relied on the presence of grand external antagonists to pull themselves forward and to tide over internal differences under the force of forward momentum. In the 1994-2000 period, the JVP had much to shout and scream about – they gained from the growing body of disenchanted PA voters who were frustrated with the Kumaratunga government’s privatizations, devolution, corruption, abuse of authority and failed promises such as on abolishing the executive presidency. In the 2001-2005 period, the JVP experienced unprecedented prominence by leading the opposition to the peace process, which they depicted as a grand threat to the nation posed by a grand ensemble of imperialist powers, Tamil terrorists, NGOs, and their local surrogates. But having come this far, the JVP has suddenly since 2005 found itself unable to project and sustain a grand anti-governmental vision on which to rally their cadres and occupy their considerable energies.

In what appears to be a bizarre throwback to their tragic past in the 1980s, the JVP has recently launched a retro anti-India campaign, and has threatened to launch a boycott of Indian products. But if the JVP’s anti-India campaign in the 1980s was tragic, it is this time a rather desperate farce. Wimal Weerawansa’s suspension is the outcome of the party finding itself in an entirely perplexing situation - of having nothing to oppose. As a result, the party’s frustrated energies and fiery revolutionary spirit have turned inward to consume one of its own for want of an outlet.

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