Comments on: The JVP in Sri Lanka – Where to now? https://groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now Journalism for Citizens Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:42:01 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.1 By: groundviews » What we can expect in Sri Lanka in 2008 https://groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-206 Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:42:01 +0000 http://www.groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-206 […] What of the JVP and JHU? I submit that we will hear even less of the JHU in 2008 than we did in 2007 as there is no longer any need for them to exist as a distinct political entity. They are self-effacing in positions unparalleled influence and authority within the Rajapakse administration. In fact, greater media exposure for them and their actions could actually vitiate their power. For example, Champika Ranawaka’s avowed environmental concerns will actually translate into policies that will see significant demographic changes in the East and in cleared areas in the North, but will simply fail to register in State owned media as essentially colonial. The JHU’s rabid intolerance of meaningful power sharing beyond the 13th Amendment, that it associates with the dissolution of and a grave threat to its ideal of a Sinhala Buddhist State, will find ready expression in the policies of the Rajapakse administration that will in no way accept recommendations by the APRC that are aligned to the federal idea. It will continue to set assert that only the JHU are true patriots and take pains to set themselves apart from what they consider and will publicly express as the essentially unprincipled political opportunism of the JVP. For its part, the JVP will continue to cantankerously and venomously attack the government’s record of corruption, fiscal policies and war efforts. Fundamentally however, the last thing it wants to do is to topple the government. As I noted in an article on the JVP I wrote in 2007, The JVP’s essential intolerance of dissent and plural opinion, both within its party and in polity and society writ large, is one that the Rajapakse administration has adopted and promoted in the SLFP, and how! Today, the JVP itself can only define itself in opposition to a mirror image of itself – the government’s ethnic majoritarianism by the self-proclaimed children of ’56 significantly challenges and vitiates the JVP’s own fire brand Sinhala nationalist propaganda. Much as they will publicly deride the government, they will be even more dependent on it for their own political survival in 2008. […]

]]> By: suntzu https://groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-205 Mon, 22 Oct 2007 06:25:21 +0000 http://www.groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-205 Why…oh why do people like Dayan Jayatilleka and Dr. Rajiva Wijesinghe only see the atrocities of the LTTE? Why do they turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the SL Government on the Tamils, be it the present SLFP Government or the UNP Governments of the past?
Remember that every action has an equal and opposite reaction! If power had been devolved after independence, there would not be an LTTE or a Prabahakaran today!

]]> By: Dayan Jayatilleka https://groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-204 Sun, 21 Oct 2007 15:25:05 +0000 http://www.groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-204 hey sanjana, i didn’t know you wrote the piece, as it didn’t carry the name or even the pseudonym of the author. as for your earlier views on the LTTE, they are irrelevent to my comment which was on this distinct text. here, the only mention ( let alone criticism) of the LTTE is that the sinhala bad guys are unwilling to share power with it.

i stand by my comparative comment on the SLFP/JVP.

ah well, gotta stop now and suit up. off to brussels in an hour to join minister mahinda samarasinghe and old friend rajiva meet the EU/EC bigwigs.

]]> By: Sanjana https://groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-203 Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:03:16 +0000 http://www.groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-203 Dear Dayan,

I was pleasantly surprised to land in Geneva to a comment from you, reminding me of our regular email exchanges (nearly 200 in all) when we were both Down Under commenting on the developments back home.

On your first point, there is no disagreeing with you on the factors contributing to the JVP’s strength in parliament after the elections of ’94. My point however that you’ve failed to grasp was different – that their numerical and vocal strength in parliament and even outside, is no longer any real measure of their influence in government and governance. They certainly will not disappear and may in fact be far more in our face in the months to come, but their trenchant critiques will be the proverbial sound and fury with little significance. In “The Lankan Ideology”, published in Sept. 2004 you said: “The SLFP has a surplus ‘will to power’ but not a ‘will to hegemony’ understood in the Gramscian sense of ‘strategic direction’: hence it tails behind the JVP.”

I think Mahinda’s turned this assertion on its head, don’t you?

On your second point, you can only honestly assert that I am partial to the LTTE if you have not read my articles over the past 3 -4 years, which I know is not true. This website alone contains many of them, and articles by many others including commentary that counter what you find “exceedingly revealing”.

Thirdly, this is in fact a ground view – my own. And if you perceive it to be “pathetically alienated from the people as they are”, it may well be true. In articulating what I feel and believe, I am essentially trying to understand that which surrounds me. I write for myself. Others must bear the burden of defining me or even more tragically, in the Sri Lanka of today, agreeing with me.

Sanjana

]]> By: Dayan Jayatilleka https://groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-202 Sun, 21 Oct 2007 08:51:50 +0000 http://www.groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-202 A slickly written and politically correct critique which however fails to mention the role of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s appeasement of the Tigers, his neoliberal economic cutbacks, CBK and Mangala’s lopsided pact with the JVP, and CBK’s even more lopsided if abortive PTOMS, as factors in the rise and present parliamentary strength of the JVP. Not very impressive as analysis, therefore.

Inasmuch as the article contain not a word of criticism of the LTTE, it is also exceedingly revealing.

Were the ‘enlightened’ elements of our society as anti-Tiger ( i.e. as anti-fascist) as they are pro-devolution and peace; were they as anti-Tiger as they are anti-JVP, they would not be as pathetically alienated from the people as they are. This is a groundview? which ground? where? whose?

]]> By: Bentzz https://groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-201 Sat, 20 Oct 2007 08:13:53 +0000 http://www.groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-201 1.”All this leaves the party with little else to do other than to constantly belabor the actions of Rajapakse administration with no real teeth to bring about any change.”

2.it is not anymore a party or political force capable of any significant influence in politics and governance

So if JVP is no longer a capable political force why seek their help to topple this administration!! I just don’t get this!!

]]> By: Suren Raghavan https://groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-200 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:28:49 +0000 http://www.groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-200 Dear Sham,
You appear to be correct in the records of the reactionary and destructionist politics of JVP. But as a student of Political Science I wonder, what is the net result of all your cited achievements of the JVP? to Sri Lanka as collective identity or to the Sinhalese and Tamil nations ( and to the Muslims) in their attempt to discover a postcolonial political destiny?
S

]]> By: Sham https://groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-199 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:41:16 +0000 http://www.groundviews.org/2007/10/19/the-jvp-in-sri-lanka-where-to-now/#comment-199 i think that JVP fills a useful aspect of Sri Lanka………….
they
– create havoc for NGO’s who would have been ustopable in a UNP regime.
– took out the Fedaralism word out of UNP and messed up TNA UNP allience..
– knows that they cant topple the government because they cant get a higher amount of seats
– JVP takes swings at all UN, IMF

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