Colombians and the JVP: Puppetry a la the CIA

by Gamini Seneviratne

Our electors must be baffled by what those who call themselves “JVP” have been doing in the past few months in which they have enjoyed the right to exercise state power. One has to look not just at events here but to developments centered on shall we say NATO and its investments in politicians in the global South.

To begin to understand all that we need to go back to what is regarded as the beginning here – the insurrection of 1971. It has been portrayed as an armed uprising by ‘socialists’ / ‘communists’ who were either Russia-oriented ‘Stalinists’ or who, on waking up each morning, engaged in a ritual reading of Chairman Mao’s little Red Book.

And what indeed provoked that effort to acquire arms for the supposed revolution by raiding Police Stations (which were known to have some 202 or 303 rifles that were in firing order. In that exercise the government responded by sending in army volunteers who proved to be somewhat better equipped than the Police and even less disciplined in combat situations than they. Their overall commander, Rohana Wijeweera, alas, was captured before the action began: he had lain in wait where routine Police patrols were known to take place and had taken to his heels when they appeared. He was taken into custody (which provided him with safe harbour behind prison walls). In later years, Somawansa Amarasinghe, another ‘leader’ sought refuge overseas well in time.

Even more interesting than such detail was the fact that it was a revolt against a coalition of left / left of center political parties (SLFP, LSSP, Communist parties) that had scored a handsome electoral victory against the then and forever mish-mash of politikkas that are usually classified as a rightwing group, the UNP. That coalition had set in motion programmes to bring under State control or otherwise ‘socialising’ “the commanding heights of the economy”.

They had also outlawed South Vietnam, Israel and Taiwan that served not so much as outposts of the imperial ambitions of the US policy makers but served the market, notionally monitored by the Pentagon, for the weaponry of the arms manufacturers.

A Lankan government that does such outrageous things had to be toppled – in what has entered the literature as ‘regime change’. Relatively recent successes of such US ‘policy’ interventions are Ukraine (where ‘NATO’ removed the president elected by the people and thrust in their puppet cum mouthpiece), and the criminal assault on governance honoured in Pakistan by the vast majority of electors led by Imran Khan, the most honourable and competent figure by far in all of South Asia

And, all the while that fountain of Democracy, Human Rights and other such laudables as International Law, yes, the USA, was continuing to fund research organisations including Universities to produce ever more lethal weaponry for use against the people, all non-human of course, of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the ‘Middle East’.

All that has of course been a continuation of the ‘Manhattan Project’ that had made it possible for “America” to destroy Hiroshima & Nagasaki when Japan was on the cusp of surrendering to the Russian forces that were already across the waters in Manchuria and the northern islands of Japan.

There’s a clear difference though in terms of ‘American’ priorities: the scale of investment on war has been blown up from millions of dollars to billions and on to trillions. How does it fund such a “growth” in “investment”? Besides making health care and education virtually unaffordable, it has worked on expanding a landscape of homelessness while its investment in prisons, in arming Police to enable them to Keep the Peace and weaving garlands to honour the National Rifle Association (NRA).

But regardless of all such efforts we should never lose sight of the investment that underpins them all: the manufacture and dissemination of lies: you could call them fabrications or spin or, as is today the preferred characterization, ‘media bias’ (which is also sought to be sanitised as ‘double-standards’ and ‘hypocrisy’). The investments on all that might, for all we know, be in $$ billion in their uppermost range.

And it has become impossible to overlook the investment in politicians from the sub-State level to Congress and the White House. To all of which we must add what common superstition used to say was Unthinkable: the Judiciary.

It should be noted too that such as Soththi Upali should not be regarded as architects of a new political culture.  The association/camaraderie between politicians and members of the underworld has a long history in most parts of a world that is said to thirst for democracy.

It should baffle nobody that the trial of the ‘socialists’ bent on regime change in 1971 was attended every day by Mr. R Premadasa. Or, that Wijeweera’s last request to his captors was that he be taken before the then power-wielder, Premadasa.

Now, we see in the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna or “NPP’ (or, in an attempt at a more sophisticated try at misleading them, “Malimava” or ‘the Compass’) what these supposed ‘socialists’ really are or wish to see for the country or for themselves in their lifetime.

The raggers at places of higher education target the brighter entrants to them in a scenario that led them, ab initio, to murder such beneficiaries of the people as, say, Dr. Rex de Costa, (way back in 1971 up in Deniyaya).

It should come as no surprise then that the objectives that have been fed to the JVP” has required them to support raggers and to focus on damaging its own leaders such as Weerawansa, who show signs of helping the country and combating the forces led by the CIA.

When, themselves, in a position of power, those blessed by them have demonstrated just whom they represent. By way of example one would have to examine what, as Minister of Agriculture, etc., AKD actually did twenty years ago. The restoration of 10,000 small tanks  was touted by the JVP as the foundation for the redevelopment of an agrarian culture: AKD never pursued that but quite recently it was proclaimed that he had the distinction of ‘cleaning up’ the Kandy Lake (the good-to-see and walk around bit of water that tourists love). There could be no clearer example than that of the cynicism that envelops their ‘thinking’.

The hand of ‘the CIA’ has been long visible on many fronts. And in that the support of the IMF has always been crucial to the project of destabilisation. One might think that it all began with JRJ’s enabling of corruption, but then one comes with examples from much earlier. J’s drive post 1977 was preceded by, say, the battle for the Freedom of the Press (so vital for the survival of a fascist regime) in 1964 that was greased by a hand-out of 20,000 rupees each to the MPs who crossed the floor and of much more to C.P .de Silva, who led that walk. That operation was orchestrated by Esmond Wickremasinghe.

That such funding has always tended to be the needful back-stop of politics is not disputed but ‘regime change’ requires much stronger instruments of shall we say ‘investment’ in which the IMF plays a commanding role. Much has been the praise bestowed on Dr. Manmohan Singh recently to mark his passing; what I recall is Dr. Gamani Corea (Chairman of the South Commission when Dr. Singh was its Secretary) telling me that he had asked Dr. Singh what he was up to as the Finance Minister of India and that Dr. S had dodged giving him an answer: well, part of the IMF package that Manmohan shoved on India was a targeted explosion of corruption within the government. Your readers would not require you to quote examples for them of what’s been going on here.

And, nowadays the CIA in the form of the US Ambassador, has shown its hand yet again: Ms. Chung, whose role in inducting an unabashed Colombian, into Parliament via the JVP has been quite obvious, has chosen to go public with their support for the unabashed co-leader of the corrupt strand of the Rajapaksas.