Features

The SJB’s trust deficit and the JVP-NPP’s strategy

Published

3 years ago

2022/11/6

By Uditha Devapriya

The aragalaya that lasted from February to somewhere in August showed two things: the people’s anger at the regime and the people’s rage against the system. The two are clean different. While a considerable section of the protesters wanted Gotabaya Rajapaksa out, a not inconsiderable second layer used these calls to campaign against the government: hence the interchangeable use of “regime change” and “system change.”

Given this, people should be forgiven for thinking the protests were confused, disjointed and unfocused, because they were exactly that. Laudable as their goals were, they soon deteriorated into a confused morass of rage, anger, and frustration.

The distinction between regime and State is one of the most profound in political science. Sri Lanka’s liberals and left-liberals, not to mention anarchists, tend to confuse and conflate the two. A State exists above, and beyond, a regime. A regime exists well below it, and is in fact subservient to it. If your call to displace a regime gets mixed up in calls to displace the State, then a regime, however unpopular, will find it very easy to make a comeback, on the pretext that protesters are seeking to overthrow an entire political system and with it the last vestiges of law and order. This is precisely what happened on July 13 and 14, when the FSP, followed by the JVP-NPP, asked people to walk into parliament. Their intention may or may not have been to overthrow the legislature, but people thought so.

This in turn activated the more liberal and conservative elements in the aragalaya. Almost immediately after the likes of Kumar Gunaratnam and Sunil Handunneti mobilised crowds at parliament, these groups sprang up on social media, urging people not to go and be hoodwinked by socialist parties. What these groups forgot, in their outcries, was that it had been these socialist elements – or those parading themselves as such – which had led and mobilised the protests since May. Prime among these groups, of course, was the FSP allied IUSF. The IUSF’s long march to Galle Face Green was cheered by a hitherto politically inert middle-class, in particular the youth. It is these same sections that are today castigating the IUSF and the FSP over allegations of ragging at universities.

In other words, the honeymoon is over, even if temporarily. The government has seen it fit to act against protesters and it sees the spate of arrests it has been unleashing since last month as a means of securing, if not the country, then at least Colombo. The same middle-class that hailed them as heroes are no longer bothered. This is natural, and it speaks more about the IUSF’s strategic error of relying on them than about the class preferences of these milieus. Related to this, I would say, is the IUSF’s, JVP-NPP’s, and of course FSP’s tendency to mix up State and regime, which has led these groups to commit two major blunders: to cast themselves as the only political choices in the country, and to alienate Opposition parties which can be made use of in a wider anti-government movement.

I think the November 2 protest showed these tendencies well. While the SJB, the de facto and de jure Opposition in the country, entered into an alliance of sorts with the FSP – and hence FSP allied groups – SJB MPs who entered the protests were not viewed favourably by many of the protesters themselves. Nuzly Hameem, who I believe is one of the more sincere protesters in that crowd, was blunt about Sajith Premadasa: “He simply ran away!” When an SJB official rose up to Premadasa’s defence – as he should – by arguing that Premadasa was afraid of the police attacking demonstrators, Hameem quickly countered: “Irony is such that Opposition leader run away leaving the protesters behind scared that oppression would take place where the main slogan of the protest is ‘Stop Oppression’.”

The protests caught much attention, here and abroad. The international media was much more sympathetic to their demands. The local media, by contrast, either ignored them or demonised them. One leading newspaper highlighted Premadasa’s desertion, in effect questioning his credibility. The protesters themselves, on social media, voiced their anger at Premadasa, more or less agreeing with the same media that marginalised their campaign. I think this shows the SJB’s trust deficit, a deficit compounded if not widened by Premadasa’s actions during the May 9 debacle, and his unwillingness – critiqued even by analysts like Dr Dayan Jayatilleka – to take on the premiership when it was offered to him.

At the same time, these developments have disenchanted sections of the Left opposition. What the FSP thought of Premadasa’s actions last Wednesday we may never know. But we know what the JVP-NPP thought. They refused to join the protests. Justifying his party’s line, MP Wasantha Samarasinghe contended that those taking part in them were more or less siding with the government. One of the demonstrators’ many calls was the abolition of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). MP Samarasinghe point-blank observed that such calls diverted attention from other issues, and that those taking up cudgels against the PTA were following the government’s agenda. By making this case for his party’s decision not to take part, Samarasinghe thus effectively distanced it from the FSP and the SJB.

I think I understand the JVP-NPP’s argument, whataboutist as it may be. At a time of a deepening economic and social crisis, the government is using the PTA to crack down on dissent. MP Samarasinghe and the JVP-NPP may be thinking that if the campaign against the government focuses solely, or mainly, on the PTA, it will embolden the government, or the State, to portray protesters as terrorists and fellow travellers. Over the last few weeks the government has instituted legal action against several aragalistas and this has enabled it to depict the latter as extremists. Samarasinghe’s argument is that by focusing on the PTA, instead of the gross incompetence that continues to wreak havoc on the economy, these protests will make it easier for the government to suppress dissent.

This is the more complex explanation. The simpler explanation, of course, is that the JVP-NPP does not want to take part in any campaign organised by not one, but two, of its bete noires. It does not like the FSP and it has so far resisted any attempt at forging an alliance with that outfit. It does not like Sajith Premadasa, if at all for his sin of being his father’s son. Lately it has badmouthed his party, calling it no better than the SLPP – invoking, of course, the late Mangala Samaraweera’s “two sides, same coin” argument. The JVP-NPP sees itself as the superior of these two formations and for that reason it does not wish to enter into any alliance with them. Though Premadasa himself has tried to invite them, and has made many overtures to this end during the last two years, he has failed.

In politics, it is perfectly possible to be correct and wrong at the same time. The JVP-NPP is correct in its characterisation of the SJB. Not because the SJB hasn’t tried, but because it hasn’t tried hard enough. Sajith Premadasa’s speech against the recent Budget showed that the SJB wants to be seen as following a different economic paradigm. Yet the blowback against the party by centre-right, right-wing, and neoliberal outfits and think-tanks based in Colombo has pushed the party’s stalwarts, like Harsha de Silva and Eran Wickramaratne, to make statements at odds with Premadasa’s speech: one of them has come out in support of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s policies. These elements are deeply conservative and neoliberal in their outlook. The JVP-NPP cannot be faulted for calling them out on this.

The JVP-NPP is wrong, in my view, in where it wants to go with this diagnosis. Any sensible political formation pitted against an overbearing regime must value what Mao characterised as the broadest possible alliance. In no revolution have revolutionary elements all come together with a consensus on every issue and problem. Latin America is seeing a resurgence of the Pink Tide precisely because the left and centre-left have chosen not to walk it alone. This has won these parties some censure from the dogmatist Left: the editors of the World Socialist Web Site, for instance, have poured scorn on the Workers’ Party in Brazil and its mobilisation of leftist forces by calling the latter elements “pseudo-left.” The WSWS calls the JVP-NPP “pseudo-left” too: a charge the party may not agree with.

But I digress here. My point is that the JVP-NPP cannot isolate itself from the mainstream Opposition. At the same time, it cannot allow itself to be co-opted by the mainstream. The Latin American Pink Tide analogy loses ground when you consider that elements within the SJB, or what I’d like to call the Ranilist faction, are much more to the right than the centre-left and liberal elements which sided with Lula da Silva’s party in Brazil. The WSWS may be wrong in terming these formations, and their supporters, “pseudo-left”, but this is a label that can be applied to the SJB’s recent attempts at shifting to the left. The recent protests, in that sense, showed both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Left elements in the aragalaya. Unless they come up with an alliance with other parties, and unless those other parties free themselves from their neoliberal past, the only time we’ll see a vibrant protest movement here is when the country runs out of fuel, gas, and electricity.

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

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Features

US’ drastic aid cut to UN poses moral challenge to world

Published

1 hour ago

2026/01/1

Thilina Walpola

An UN humanitarian mission in the Gaza. [File: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency]

‘Adapt, shrink or die’ – thus runs the warning issued by the Trump administration to UN humanitarian agencies with brute insensitivity in the wake of its recent decision to drastically reduce to $2bn its humanitarian aid to the UN system. This is a substantial climb down from the $17bn the US usually provided to the UN for its humanitarian operations.

Considering that the US has hitherto been the UN’s biggest aid provider, it need hardly be said that the US decision would pose a daunting challenge to the UN’s humanitarian operations around the world. This would indeed mean that, among other things, people living in poverty and stifling material hardships, in particularly the Southern hemisphere, could dramatically increase. Coming on top of the US decision to bring to an end USAID operations, the poor of the world could be said to have been left to their devices as a consequence of these morally insensitive policy rethinks of the Trump administration.

Earlier, the UN had warned that it would be compelled to reduce its aid programs in the face of ‘the deepest funding cuts ever.’ In fact the UN is on record as requesting the world for $23bn for its 2026 aid operations.

If this UN appeal happens to go unheeded, the possibilities are that the UN would not be in a position to uphold the status it has hitherto held as the world’s foremost humanitarian aid provider. It would not be incorrect to state that a substantial part of the rationale for the UN’s existence could come in for questioning if its humanitarian identity is thus eroded.

Inherent in these developments is a challenge for those sections of the international community that wish to stand up and be counted as humanists and the ‘Conscience of the World.’ A responsibility is cast on them to not only keep the UN system going but to also ensure its increased efficiency as a humanitarian aid provider to particularly the poorest of the poor.

It is unfortunate that the US is increasingly opting for a position of international isolation. Such a policy position was adopted by it in the decades leading to World War Two and the consequences for the world as a result for this policy posture were most disquieting. For instance, it opened the door to the flourishing of dictatorial regimes in the West, such as that led by Adolph Hitler in Germany, which nearly paved the way for the subjugation of a good part of Europe by the Nazis.

If the US had not intervened militarily in the war on the side of the Allies, the West would have faced the distressing prospect of coming under the sway of the Nazis and as a result earned indefinite political and military repression. By entering World War Two the US helped to ward off these bleak outcomes and indeed helped the major democracies of Western Europe to hold their own and thrive against fascism and dictatorial rule.

Republican administrations in the US in particular have not proved the greatest defenders of democratic rule the world over, but by helping to keep the international power balance in favour of democracy and fundamental human rights they could keep under a tight leash fascism and linked anti-democratic forces even in contemporary times. Russia’s invasion and continued occupation of parts of Ukraine reminds us starkly that the democracy versus fascism battle is far from over.

Right now, the US needs to remain on the side of the rest of the West very firmly, lest fascism enjoys another unfettered lease of life through the absence of countervailing and substantial military and political power.

However, by reducing its financial support for the UN and backing away from sustaining its humanitarian programs the world over the US could be laying the ground work for an aggravation of poverty in the South in particular and its accompaniments, such as, political repression, runaway social discontent and anarchy.

What should not go unnoticed by the US is the fact that peace and social stability in the South and the flourishing of the same conditions in the global North are symbiotically linked, although not so apparent at first blush. For instance, if illegal migration from the South to the US is a major problem for the US today, it is because poor countries are not receiving development assistance from the UN system to the required degree. Such deprivation on the part of the South leads to aggravating social discontent in the latter and consequences such as illegal migratory movements from South to North.

Accordingly, it will be in the North’s best interests to ensure that the South is not deprived of sustained development assistance since the latter is an essential condition for social contentment and stable governance, which factors in turn would guard against the emergence of phenomena such as illegal migration.

Meanwhile, democratic sections of the rest of the world in particular need to consider it a matter of conscience to ensure the sustenance and flourishing of the UN system. To be sure, the UN system is considerably flawed but at present it could be called the most equitable and fair among international development organizations and the most far-flung one. Without it world poverty would have proved unmanageable along with the ills that come along with it.

Dehumanizing poverty is an indictment on humanity. It stands to reason that the world community should rally round the UN and ensure its survival lest the abomination which is poverty flourishes. In this undertaking the world needs to stand united. Ambiguities on this score could be self-defeating for the world community.

For example, all groupings of countries that could demonstrate economic muscle need to figure prominently in this initiative. One such grouping is BRICS. Inasmuch as the US and the West should shrug aside Realpolitik considerations in this enterprise, the same goes for organizations such as BRICS.

The arrival at the above international consensus would be greatly facilitated by stepped up dialogue among states on the continued importance of the UN system. Fresh efforts to speed-up UN reform would prove major catalysts in bringing about these positive changes as well. Also requiring to be shunned is the blind pursuit of narrow national interests.

Features

Egg white scene …

Published

1 hour ago

2026/01/1

Thilina Walpola

Hi! Great to be back after my Christmas break.

Thought of starting this week with egg white.

Yes, eggs are brimming with nutrients beneficial for your overall health and wellness, but did you know that eggs, especially the whites, are excellent for your complexion?

OK, if you have no idea about how to use egg whites for your face, read on.

Egg White, Lemon, Honey:

Separate the yolk from the egg white and add about a teaspoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice and about one and a half teaspoons of organic honey. Whisk all the ingredients together until they are mixed well.

Apply this mixture to your face and allow it to rest for about 15 minutes before cleansing your face with a gentle face wash.

Don’t forget to apply your favourite moisturiser, after using this face mask, to help seal in all the goodness.

Egg White, Avocado:

In a clean mixing bowl, start by mashing the avocado, until it turns into a soft, lump-free paste, and then add the whites of one egg, a teaspoon of yoghurt and mix everything together until it looks like a creamy paste.

Apply this mixture all over your face and neck area, and leave it on for about 20 to 30 minutes before washing it off with cold water and a gentle face wash.

Egg White, Cucumber, Yoghurt:

In a bowl, add one egg white, one teaspoon each of yoghurt, fresh cucumber juice and organic honey. Mix all the ingredients together until it forms a thick paste.

Apply this paste all over your face and neck area and leave it on for at least 20 minutes and then gently rinse off this face mask with lukewarm water and immediately follow it up with a gentle and nourishing moisturiser.

Egg White, Aloe Vera, Castor Oil:

To the egg white, add about a teaspoon each of aloe vera gel and castor oil and then mix all the ingredients together and apply it all over your face and neck area in a thin, even layer.

Leave it on for about 20 minutes and wash it off with a gentle face wash and some cold water. Follow it up with your favourite moisturiser.

Features

Confusion cropping up with Ne-Yo in the spotlight

Published

1 hour ago

2026/01/1

Thilina Walpola

Ne-Yo: His management should clarify the last-minute cancellation

Superlatives galore were used, especially on social media, to highlight R&B singer Ne-Yo’s trip to Sri Lanka: Global superstar Ne-Yo to perform live in Colombo this December; Ne-Yo concert puts Sri Lanka back on the global entertainment map; A global music sensation is coming to Sri Lanka … and there were lots more!

At an official press conference, held at a five-star venue, in Colombo, it was indicated that the gathering marked a defining moment for Sri Lanka’s entertainment industry as international R&B powerhouse and three-time Grammy Award winner Ne-Yo prepares to take the stage in Colombo this December.

What’s more, the occasion was graced by the presence of Sunil Kumara Gamage, Minister of Sports & Youth Affairs of Sri Lanka, and Professor Ruwan Ranasinghe, Deputy Minister of Tourism, alongside distinguished dignitaries, sponsors, and members of the media.

Shah Rukh Khan: Disappointed his fans in Sri Lanka

According to reports, the concert had received the official endorsement of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, recognising it as a flagship initiative in developing the country’s concert economy by attracting fans, and media, from all over South Asia.

Nick Carter: His concert, too, was cancelled due to “Unforeseen circumstances

However, I had that strange feeling that this concert would not become a reality, keeping in mind what happened to Nick Carter’s Colombo concert – cancelled at the very last moment.

Carter issued a video message announcing he had to return to the USA due to “unforeseen circumstances” and a “family emergency”.

Though “unforeseen circumstances” was the official reason provided by Carter and the local organisers, there was speculation that low ticket sales may also have been a factor in the cancellation.

Well, “Unforeseen Circumstances” has cropped up again!

In a brief statement, via social media, the organisers of the Ne-Yo concert said the decision was taken due to “unforeseen circumstances and factors beyond their control.”

Ne-Yo, too, subsequently made an announcement, citing “Unforeseen circumstances.”

The public has a right to know what these “unforeseen circumstances” are, and who is to be blamed – the organisers or Ne-Yo!

Ne-Yo’s management certainly need to come out with the truth.

However, those who are aware of some of the happenings in the setup here put it down to poor ticket sales, mentioning that the tickets for the concert, and a meet-and-greet event, were exorbitantly high, considering that Ne-Yo is not a current mega star.

We also had a cancellation coming our way from Shah Rukh Khan, who was scheduled to visit Sri Lanka for the City of Dreams resort launch, and then this was received: “Unfortunately due to unforeseen personal reasons beyond his control, Mr. Khan is no longer able to attend.”

Referring to this kind of mess up, a leading showbiz personality said that it will only make people reluctant to buy their tickets, online.

“Tickets will go mostly at the gate and it will be very bad for the industry,” he added.