Saturday 29th March, 2025

University students who campaigned very hard to ensure the JVP-led NPP’s victory in last year’s elections, may have thought they would be able to conduct a peaceful protest in front of the Health Ministry in support of a group of Allied Health Sciences graduates, without being arrested and hauled up before court. But they were in for a rude shock, yesterday, when the police swooped on the protesters and arrested 27 of them including several Inter University Students’ Federation (IUSF) members for violating a court order that banned their agitation.

Time was when JVP used to let out howls of protests when the police descended on protests, after obtaining court orders against them, at the behest of previous governments. It condemned police action based on court orders, as draconian tactics employed by dictatorial regimes bent on suppressing the people’s right to protest. It also launched numerous protests against the previous governments in violation of court orders, and even tried to march on the Presidential Secretariat only to be dispersed by the riot police, who used teargas, rubber bullets, and water cannon liberally. At present, the police do as the NPP government says and go all out to obtain court orders banning protests, which they crush, the way they did in the past.

Opinion may be divided on public protests which make already congested urban roads even more chaotic, much to the inconvenience of the public. Police action against protesters may therefore resonate with many people. However, successive governments have not cared to tackle the root causes of public protests––chronic grievances and injustices. The current NPP administration has failed to be different from its predecessors.

The Students’ Union of the Allied Health Sciences Faculty of the University of Peradeniya launched their protest on Thursday, demanding that the government do away with the requirement for its members to sit an examination to join the state health services. The fact that the medical graduates of national universities are recruited to the health service straightaway may have prompted the protesting Allied Health Sciences graduates to make the aforesaid demand. The protesters’ talks with the Health authorities failed yesterday, and they decided to intensify their agitation, coupling it with a fast. The police moved in, made arrests and pulled down a makeshift hut the agitators had put up for their fast. Some student leaders were heard, on television, cursing the NPP leaders they had backed.

The incumbent government should have addressed the grievances of the Allied Health Sciences graduates before they took to the streets. After all, the JVP/NPP made an election pledge to give the graduates of state universities priority in the public sector recruitment. Representatives of the unemployed graduates, at press briefings and in television interviews, play a video of JVP/NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake making the above-mentioned promise during his presidential election campaign last year. In an audio clip, JVP/NPP stalwart and former IUSF Convener, Sunil Handunnetti, is heard telling an unemployed graduate who telephoned him in the run-up to last year’s general election that they (the JVP/NPP leaders) would have to secure their jobs first—meaning election to Parliament—before resolving the issue of graduate unemployment. The members of the unemployed graduates’ association insist that their efforts to contact Minister Handunnetti have since been in vain.

The JVP leveraged its ability to mobilise flash mobs and hold protests to weaken previous governments in defiance of court/police orders. It drove students and workers to agitations, in their thousands, to advance its political agenda, condemning the past governments for using the police and judicial orders to suppress the people’s right to protest. Now, it is employing the same methods as its predecessors to crush protests instead of heeding the grievances of protesters. It ought to get protesters around the table and give them a patient hearing and do its best to solve their problems. That is the least it can do for those who believed its promises and worked tirelessly to ensure its impressive electoral victory last year.