Rehashing the failures of the Left

By Uditha Devapriya

In Sri Lanka, March conjures visions of big matches, cycle parades, and elitist tamashas in Colombo. This March, we will be seeing an outpouring of opposition, defiance, resistance. The outpouring is in the form of anger at the powers that be and their enforcement of austerity at any price. The elite of course see austerity as a prelude to stability, and conflate the two: hence the tendentious sermonising about the necessity of the reforms they are implementing now. Protesters and demonstrators, on the other hand, are demanding greater equity and fairness: they are not against these reforms, but against what they see as unfair taxes and tariff hikes. There is clearly a disconnect here.

The Sri Lankan State has always resorted to force to assert its will. This is what a State does, anywhere. Yet for all its flaws and excesses, the Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime thought twice about resorting to the kind of force that we are seeing today. That government was caught off-guard and plunged straight into a crisis for which neither it nor the country at large was ready. Against such a backdrop, the Rajapaksa regime did not know how to respond to an unprecedented groundswell of popular hatred.

As Lakshman Gunasekara has clearly, and aptly, observed, the protests showed not so much a seething discontent with the regime as a pivotal shift in the government’s constituencies, in particular the Southern peasantry and Sinhala middle-classes. In other words, the regime’s biggest supporters were turning against their man. The absence, in their eyes, of an alternative leadership in the Opposition meant that these classes had only one option, that of popular revolt.

The government’s seeming inability to mobilise itself in the face of these protests had to do with the fact that protesters came under one roof – in Galle Face – with one aim in mind, namely deposing the President. There may have been differences, and as the days and months progressed, as the President appointed his former arch-rival as his Prime Minister, these differences did come to light. But by and large, the President did not budge or blink. He remained where he was and this enabled protesters to proceed with their campaign to remove him. In doing this they were willing to overlook petty political differences. It is an open secret that Sri Lanka’s middle-classes have a phobia against socialist politics. And yet, with their aim of toppling a reviled President, they allowed left-wing elements, particularly the FSP-allied IUSF, into the protests, expressing solidarity with them.

Colombo’s liberal commentariat welcomed this. For them, it was something to be praised, encouraged. Yet underlying it was a fatal contradiction. The protesters were all united, yes, but only insofar as their goal of getting rid of Gotabaya Rajapaksa remained unachieved or unrealised. The IUSF managed to parade itself, understandably, as heroes of the day: when they walked to Colombo, nearly everyone at Galle Face got up and cheered them. Yet not long ago, when the police and army were deployed to baton-charge, tear-gas, and imprison them, the middle-classes valorising them today took to social media to excoriate them. The immiseration of this class transformed their outlook. They had once looked up to the army, nationalist politicians, and fellow travellers. Now they were looking up to student protesters and their fellow travellers. There was something astonishing about this.

Whether the Left’s aims in, and for, these protests were right or wrong is another debate altogether. I am concerned here with a much narrower perspective: that of political survival. From that vantage point, it’s clear that the Left failed to establish itself at the centre of the protests when they could have. Gotagogama had been patronised if not funded by moneyed interests: it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise. These moneyed interests – including not just wealthy expatriates but also business elites hard done by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration’s economic policies – were admittedly invested in the popular uprising. But they were not willing to go beyond that moment. This much should have been clear to the Left when, after Rajapaksa’s appointment of Ranil Wickremesinghe, a section of the protests moved out or sounded caution on the movement. Even at such a juncture, when it was clear the momentum of the protests would be lost, neither the IUSF nor the Left parties linked to it or associated with it did much to ensure their continuity.

There is an argument currently going around, peddled mainly by the Left, but also the liberal intelligentsia, that last year’s aragalaya transcended ethno-racial distinctions, that it had the trappings of a truly “Sri Lankan” movement. But this is telling only half the story. The silence of northern civil society, even in the face of growing unrest in Colombo and the rest of the country, revealed differences between those same ethno-racial groups that left and liberal commentators contended the aragalaya had brought together at Galle Face Green. And it wasn’t just ethno-religious distinctions. The aragalaya, typical for any leaderless movement, played host to an array of individuals and classes, some of whom may have envisioned the protests as a platform for tolerance, but many of whom were not above using chauvinist rhetoric to amplify their appeal. The homophobic slurs I was privy to at Gotagogama, on the day before Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation, showed that much.

Again, there is nothing really to critique in this. Liberals may beg to differ, but a popular uprising mobilises collectives and classes from across a wide spectrum. Given the lack of a definitive leadership in them, such uprisings typically make use of populist rhetoric to push itself forward. The fact is that in the context of the aragalaya at Gotagogama, this rhetoric was directed exclusively at, and against, Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The Left was unable to use that rhetoric to their advantage because it was directed at a person and did not cover, still less address, the systemic dimensions of the crisis. There is a simple reason for this. By April 2022 a consensus had built up, peddled by Colombo’s economic establishment, that the roots of the crisis lay in an overstretched public sector and welfare system, and that this had entrenched political elites. The establishment was able to perpetuate this narrative so well that when the walls came crashing down on Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July, it swiftly turned the tables on socialist outfits that had until then enjoyed much support.

Supporters of the present government – or specifically, the present President – have frequently noted that it was the protests which enabled him to come to power. This is a line touted by the New Left, particularly the JVP-NPP, as well. As an affirmation or a critique of the status quo, it is only half-correct: the aragalaya demanded a system change, but did not quite specify what, or who, they wanted. Yet it demanded an overhaul of the status quo. By definition, this included Ranil Wickremesinghe. When Rajapaksa took him in as his Prime Minister, he may or may not have known that his days were numbered. On the other hand, Wickemesinghe may or may not have known that his time was coming. In that context, as a yet docile Premier, Wickremesinghe made use of the movement to project himself as a voice of sanity, a progressive political force.

What could the Left have done? It’s hard to say. What was undeniably clear then was that Rajapaksa would go: it was a question of when, not if. But what came after? I know a few JVP-NPP supporters who allege that the FSP stole the thunder or the moment, made use of its lack of representation in parliament, and started clamouring for a people’s parliament outside the democratic system. The JVP-NPP did not heed such calls at first. But faced with immense pressure, so the JVP-NPP’s supporters critical of the FSP tell me, they joined the call to walk to parliament after July 13. The result was that it became much easier for anti-Left elements in the aragalaya – and there were very many of them, prime among them the social media stars – who cautioned against these outfits and who successfully depicted the JVP-NPP and FSP as a monolithic movement. This only empowered Ranil Wickremesinghe to resort to the “Against Anarchy” line his regime has been touting ever since.

Will the Left learn from these mistakes? I think they should. And I think they eventually will. Yet the old problems remain. The recent spate of protests is directed at one thing: unfair taxation. The economic right today is busy depicting this struggle as contradictory to the aims of the very left-wing, socialist groups organising it: these groups, so the argument goes, are against higher taxation of the sort that socialist parties elsewhere are promoting. It is unclear what answers the Left has to such questions. Yet in the absence of clear, definitive answers to them, it will continue to run the risk of marginalisation – not by the State, but more insidiously by right-wing interest groups which have always opposed them, and which have, historically, preferred to side with the State against them.

The writer is an international relations analyst, researcher, and columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com.