Ghosts from past

Tuesday 1st February, 2022

JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake came under a goon attack at the National People’s Power district convention at Kalagedihena, Gampaha on Sunday. He had some eggs thrown at him. A similar attack took place in Pettah recently, during a JVP protest march led by Dissanayake. It behoves all those who cherish democracy to take such incidents very seriously, condemn them unreservedly and ratchet up pressure on the government to prevent them, for there is the possibility of the violent elements behind them graduating from eggs to bombs.

The JVP insists that the government is behind the egg attacks on its leader. The latter has denied any involvement therein. But he that has an ill name is said to be half-hanged; the present-day leaders have an ugly history, which they will not be able to live down. It is said that old habits die hard. Two of the attackers involved in Sunday’s incident were caught and handed over to the police, and it will not be difficult to find out who ordered them to carry out the attack. The suspects are said to be working for a pro-government security firm. There is hardly anything that a desperate regime in trouble does not resort to in trying to keep hold of power.

Why is it that only the JVP has come under goon attacks? Other Opposition parties are all hat and no cattle, as it were. The SJB has not been able to function as an effective countervailing force against the government; it is floating like a bee and stinging like a butterfly, so to speak. The TNA is living in a world of its own, dreaming of federalism and grovelling before foreign diplomats in a bid to enlist their support for its campaign; it does not do anything else, apart from issuing an occasional media statement on other issues. Only the JVP is carrying out an effective anti-government campaign. This may be the reason why it has been singled out for attacks.

Even those who have not forgotten the JVP’s violent past and do not subscribe to its outworn shibboleths will agree that its right to engage in democratic politics must not be violated in any manner. An attack on any political party or activist is an attack on democracy; it must be treated as such and condemned in the strongest possible terms.

The government seems to be upset that the JVP is capitalising on its bungling. There are signs of the JVP recovering lost ground on the political front fast thanks to the government’s blunders, which are legion. JVP leaders tear the SLPP to shreds in and outside Parliament, and their anti-government campaign is gathering momentum.

Whether the JVP will be able to harness the current groundswell of popular support effectively to shore up its image and improve its electoral performance spectacularly as it did in 2004 remains to be seen, but it surely poses a huge political challenge to the government.

If the government mends its ways and lives up to people’s expectations by making good on its election pledges, there will be no need for goons to throw eggs or rocks at Opposition politicians; its opponents will be left without any major issues to flog. It has carried out the national vaccination drive extremely well, and if it could manage other programmes as well in a similar manner, its approval ratings would not plummet even if its political enemies keep yelling at it until they are blue in the face. Political violence is not only savage but also counterproductive.

Meanwhile, the government had better bear in mind that an ideologically-driven, cadre-based political organisation cannot be intimidated with egg or rock attacks. It was a huge mistake for the Jayewardene government, mired in multiple crises, to turn on the JVP in 1983. Lessons that history provides must be learnt if trouble is to be averted.