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Pandemic! Pandemic?

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By Dr. F.E. Dias

An epidemic affects a high proportion of a population at the same time, and with respect to disease, it means an outbreak that spreads quickly and regionally affects a disproportionate number of people. Pandemics are epidemics that spread across wide geographical areas such as nations and continents. It should be a matter of interest to us that, according to information prevailing and incessant regarding the pandemic, we are said to be in the middle of, the proportion of, shall we say patients, as routinely identified via PCR tests, who show no symptoms of COVID-19 greatly outweigh those that do.

Preamble

Let us first understand what we are talking about. Coronaviruses are a family (Coronaviridae) of viruses that can cause the common cold, SARS (attributed to SARS-CoV) and MERS (attributed to MERS-CoV), the latter two being qualified as Severe Acute and Middle East respectively. The respiratory malady we refer to as the common cold can also be caused by other virus types including rhinoviruses, influenza viruses, adenoviruses and several others, often in combination, with about 200 causal viral variants identified thus far, and many causative agents not yet identified.

Whereas for what is called the common cold there is no clear link between pathogen and disease, the beta-coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2, whatever its origins, is specified as the cause of the coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19, common symptoms of which are fever, cough, fatigue and many others such as shortness of breath, muscle ache, runny nose and nausea to name a few, symptoms similar to those of the common cold, influenza and other febrile diseases and allergy response. The virus usually spreads via respiratory droplets released from a carrier individual, hence the muzzles we wear while the dogs stare at us pondering at the turning of tables. So, SARS-CoV-2 is our virus and COVID-19 is the associated series of clinical symptoms, called the disease.

Detection

What about the testing to find out whether the symptoms you have can be attributed to SARS-CoV-2? There are three pertinent types of tests. One is the nucleic acid amplification via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test which is used today with the claim that it diagnoses the disease. That is, one is given to understand that it says whether you, even when asymptomatic, are infected and thereby contagious. The other two are antigen and antibody tests. Let us understand.

Antibodies, also known as immunoglobulins, are proteins produced by the B-lymphocytes in the immune system to latch on to foreign substances and consequently remove them from the body, thereby protecting from the potent harm that the foreign substance could have caused. Such foreign substances as recognised by the antibodies are called antigens, which could be toxins or components of pathogens such as the spike glycoproteins of the Coronavirus that help it to enter the host. Detection of the specific antibodies in serum does indicate that the specific antigen has entered the body but since the production of antibodies may occur days or weeks after the antigen has entered and may continue its presence for a significant period after the antigen no longer poses a threat, it does not indicate that you are at that moment likely to develop disease or to infect others. It is not diagnostic by that understanding but will be useful for assessing the durability of vaccine response or of naturally acquired immunity.

Antigens then are substances capable of eliciting an immune response. The antigen test – which is familiar to us as, the rapid test that provides a result in 15 minutes, detects the aforementioned surface protein fragments specific to the virus. While other factors such as the test kit source and competency of swabber and tester do matter, these tests provide a positive result usually when there is high or near-peak viral load. By this point, the symptoms may have begun to appear, and the individual is most contagious. It is fast, cheap and fairly simple, but could be considered as a test for infectiousness than one for infection.

PCR

The polymerase chain reaction is used to replicate a segment of DNA so that quantity sufficient for detection and analysis is produced. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has single-stranded RNA as its genetic material. Reverse transcription (RT) converts RNA into DNA. In each cycle of replication, the quantity of the gene sequence of interest is doubled so that after 40 replication cycles, a single sequence of nucleic acid would have multiplied a trillion times, that is a million of millions. The technique was developed by Dr. Kary Mullis in the eighties and he received the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1993 on account of its vast applications in genetics, microbiology, forensic science and medicine. Even Hollywood used PCR on fossilised DNA to revive and populate the Jurassic Park!

But how is the technique connected to the disease? The protocol published in January 2020 by the WHO, for public health laboratories to use in the detection of SARS-CoV-2, is based on real-time RT-PCR. A paper describing this methodology, now referred to as the Corman-Drosten paper, was subsequently submitted to the journal Eurosurveillance. It was published within 24 hours of submission, raising questions regarding the peer-review process, and two of the authors were members of the editorial board of the same journal. The protocol was consequently used in ~70 percent of tests globally and by a hundred governments and is called the gold standard for COVID-19 testing. We know it as the PCR test which if it turns out positive makes you a patient, understood to be infected and contagious, and all that follows.

The PCR test as conducted as per WHO guidelines is binary qualitative in that it returns a positive or negative result after the pre-decided number of replication cycles have been performed. The number of cycles is known as the positivity threshold or cycle threshold (cT) and is the determinant of sensitivity. The Corman-Drosten protocol does not define the threshold but appears to suggest the use of 45 replications.

Independent analyses of PCR test results against the inoculation and culture of the same samples showed that for 35 replication cycles, less than three percent produced positive cultures. That is, for a cT of 35, 97 percent of PCR test results that came out positive were, in fact, false positives. On this basis, 97 percent of ‘COVID-19 cases’ were not infected with SARS-CoV-2. For cT values above 35, the data approaches the asymptote and indicates 100 percent false positives. Most lab reports do not indicate the cT used in their test but 30 to 45 is usual.

In November 2020, a group of scientists formally pointed out flaws in the Corman-Drosten protocol. Apart from not defining the cT, there were factors such as atypically high concentrations of primer (replication initiators) that cause increased unspecific binding and product amplication, substantial variability and error in test process design that could lead, inter alia, to other Coronaviruses being detected or for residual fragments of viral RNA to be sufficient to indicate the presence of the whole virus. Such residuals may quite well be indications of a battle won by the immune system against last week’s common cold. Also, the genetic code considered for the development of the test protocol was based on theoretical or in silico sequences supplied by a Chinese laboratory since the authors at that time did not have access to infectious or inactivated SARS-CoV-2 or its isolated genomic RNA.

In January 2021, reportedly one hour after the Biden inauguration, the WHO issued a notice urging caution in the interpretation of PCR test results, stating that their protocol is merely an aid for diagnosis and that assay specifics and clinical observations need to be considered. Since it followed that it was no longer the gold standard for diagnosis, a person who tested positive on a flawed PCR protocol conducted with a meaninglessly high cT would not thereby be classified as infected or having the disease. Since then, the COVID-19 numbers have substantially reduced, at least in the USA. Eventually, in July 2021, the CDC announced that it has requested the FDA to withdraw its request for emergency use authorization of this PCR test as a diagnostic tool for the detection of SARS-CoV-2, admitting that it cannot distinguish between CoViD-19 and influenza.

Conclusion

There is the virus and its mutations. It causes illness, and complications and even death particularly when co-morbidities pre-exist. Precautions need to be taken to protect from infection, especially among those with weaker immune systems such as the elderly. Action needs to be pursued to eradicate the pathogen and even to prevent others being developed. And yet, the world has completed a revolution around the sun since the WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic in March 2020. The world has undergone a revolution as a consequence of this declaration and is still reeling from it. The question is, however, whether the pandemic was indeed a pandemic after all, at least until the vaccination campaigns began.

Corman-Drosten paper – https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.3.2000045

WHO adoption – Protocol V2 (who.int)

WHO original – Diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2 (who.int)

WHO change – WHO Information Notice for IVD Users 2020/05

CDC withdrawal – https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert-Changes_CDC_RT-PCR_SARS-CoV-2_Testing_1.html



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Waiting for a Democratic Opposition

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by Tisaranee Gunasekara

“The future is cloth waiting to be cut.”
Seamus Heaney (The Burial at Thebes)

The point had been made often enough. Without a Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency, there wouldn’t have been an Anura Kumara Dissanayake presidency. For the NPP/JVP to go from three percent to 42 percent in four plus years, the system had to be broken from within by the very leaders entrusted with its care by a majority of voters. Gotabaya Rajapaksa achieved that feat in ways inconceivable even by his most stringent critics (who in their sane minds could have imagined the fertilizer fiasco?).

But President Dissanayake’s victory has two other fathers: Ranil Wickremesinghe and Sajith Premadasa. President Dissanayake won because the competition was so uninspiring. It was more a case of Sajith Premadasa and Ranil Wickremesinghe losing rather than President Dissanayake winning. While the NPP’s rise was meteoric, President Dissanayake failed to gain 50 percent mark of the vote. He is Sri Lanka’s first minority president.

As the IHP polling revealed continuously, all major presidential candidates had negative net favourability ratings; they were more unpopular than popular. The election was a contest to pick the least unpopular leader. Thus the winner’s inability to clear the 50 percent line.

This situation hasn’t changed qualitatively in the run up to parliamentary election. According to the latest IHP poll, President Dissanayake’s net favourability rating is still negative, which means more people regard him unfavourably than favourably. He and Harini Amarasuriya are at minus 10, the least unpopular of leaders. Sajith Premadasa at minus 31, Ranil Wickremesinghe even lower, lag behind not just President Dissanayake and Ms. Amarasuriya, but also the now retired Ali Sabry.

The NPP/JVP is likely to clock a bigger win at the parliamentary election even so, because the oppositional space is clogged by Mr. Wickremesinghe and Mr. Premadasa, with the Rajapaksas hanging on to the seams. The same actors representing the same unattractive futures. Compared to these prospects, a Harini Amarasuriya premiership would seem alluring to most Sri Lankans (she is an excellent choice, in any case, for the job).

President Dissanayake has avoided any obvious missteps in his first month. He is treading cautiously, especially in the economic arena, opting not even to tweak Ranil Wickremesinghe’s deal with a group of ISB holders, despite some unfavourable – and precedent-making – clauses such as giving bondholders the option of changing the law underpinning them from New York to England or Delaware; New York is about to pass a bill giving debtor nations greater bargaining power. He is no Gotabaya, at least economics.

In Sri Lanka, it is normal for the party that wins the presidency to win the parliament as well. In 2010, after Mahinda Rajapaksa won the presidential election, the opposition unity fractured. The UNP contested on its own and the JVP contested in an alliance with the defeated presidential candidate, Sarath Fonseka. In the presidential election, Mr. Fonseka had polled 4.2 million. At the parliamentary election, the main oppositional party, the UNP, polled only 2.4 million. Even after the votes for the Tamil and Muslim parties and the JVP/Fonseka headed DNA were factored in, this amounted to an erosion on a massive scale – 1.2 million votes.

In 2019, Sajith Premadasa polled 5.6 million votes. Yet his newly formed SJB polled a mere 2.8 million at the 2020 parliamentary election. Once the votes given to Tamil and Muslim parties and the UNP were factored in, this amounted to a bigger erosion, over 2 million votes.

Even the Rajapaksas could not buck this general trend in 2015. The UNP won the general election despite the much vaunted Mahinda Sulanga.

So the NPP/JVP winning on November 14 would be the norm. The only question is about the extent of that victory: would it be limited to a simple majority or something bigger, close to a two thirds?

A simple majority would be necessary to run an effective government. But a near two thirds victory would be a tragedy. Every time a Sri Lankan party won so big, disaster ensued in 1956, 1970, 1977, 2010 and 2020. Too much power not just corrupts but also stupefies. A future NPP/JVP government might be able to avoid the (financial) corruption trap. But if burdened with a huge majority the government will not be able to evade a blunting of senses, of growing blindness and deafness to public distress, of an addling of wits. Already, future ministers are shrugging off price hikes in such staples as rice, calling them normal. They might be but the dismissive attitude hints that the rot of indifference to public pain might have begun to set in already. In the absence of a strong, principled, and effective opposition, the rot will grow faster, to the detriment of all Sri Lankans, including compass enthusiasts.

Feudal ethos and tyrannical practice

To be fully functional, a bourgeois democratic system needs bourgeois democratic parties. Unfortunately, most Sri Lankan parties are feudalist in ethos and tyrannical in practice. We have a history of leaders treating their parties as private or familial property. The Rajapaksas are the most egregious example but they didn’t start the habit, merely took it to a new low. Senanayakes and Bandaranaikes preceded the Rajapaksas, both families treating dynastic succession as the norm.

When he became the leader of the UNP, J.R. Jayewardene made a clean break with that feudalist ethos. He delinked the UNP from familial politics and opened it to new blood, providing the space for the creation of a line of brilliant second level leaders. In 1977, he allowed the candidates for the upcoming parliamentary election to choose a steering committee to manage the campaign (in a secret vote). The man who topped that internal poll was made the deputy leader, Ranasinghe Premadasa.

Had Mr. Jayewardene won a simple majority in 1977, history might have turned out differently and better. But he won a five sixth majority. It didn’t take long for hubris to set in, making a man of undeniable intellect commit a bunch of avoidable mistakes and unnecessary crimes. And having obtained undated letters of resignation from all parliamentarians, Mr. Jayewardene ran the party like a dictator. Unlike the Bandaranaikes and Senanayakes, he didn’t crown his offspring. Instead, he turned himself into an uncrowned king.

Ranil Wickremesinghe opted for a dictatorial leadership style from day one. He gave himself the title The Leader, changed the party constitution to make it literally impossible to effect leadership changes, marginalised potential challengers and promoted untalented loyalists. He slowly abandoned the J.R./Premadasa UNP’s anti-feudal ethos, turning the UNP into a party where preferment was given to spouses, siblings and offspring of politicians.

As president, Mr. Wickremesinghe prevented the economy’s freefall and achieved a turn around. The NPP government’s decision to go the same route, at least for now, is a tacit admission of the success President Wickremesinghe achieved under extremely difficult circumstances. Yet, his me-or-deluge attitude to the UNP continued and continues. As president, instead of allowing a new young leadership to rebuild the party, he kept control of the UNP via discredited and deeply unpopular yes men. After his humiliating defeat, he clings to the party leadership.

Sajith Premadasa in this department is a veritable Wickremesinghe clone. He has suffered three national defeats, losing the presidency twice and the parliament once. Yet, like Mr. Wickremesinghe, he seems determined to cling to the SJB leadership even at the cost of running the party to the ground. He is also allowing his family into politics. Consequently, the SJB too has become a party unsuited to a bourgeois democratic system, feudal in ethos, dictatorial in style.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake won the presidency because the JVP understood its own un-electability and created a more electable cocoon as cover, the NPP. Sajith Premadasa and Ranil Wickremesinghe are incapable of even such minimal evolution. Like the woolly mammoths who couldn’t adapt to climate changes and were hunted extensively, their inability to adapt to the new political climate created by the NPP/JVP victory would drive their own parties to extinction. With no opposition to keep it on its toes, the government would succumb to hubris sooner rather than later.

The rest would be history. All too familiar history.

Somethings new, one thing old

What if J.R. Jayewardene did not commit the deadly mistake of banning the JVP on totally fabricated charges?

The JVP entered the democratic mainstream in 1977. From then till about 1983, the JVP was non-racist, trying to reach out to Tamils along the lines of class solidarity. It also treated the SLFP as its main enemy, and dreamted of becoming the main opposition (thus the famous lecture series: The Journey’s end for the SLFP). The JVP leadership maintained contact with some government leaders (especially Prime Minister Premadasa). When the opposition launched the general strike of July 1980, the JVP criticised the move and stayed out of it (the strike failed and the government sacked 60,000 striking workers). At a personal level, Mr. Wijeweera got married and started raising a family. These were hardly the actions of a party or a leader harbouring insurgent intentions.

Mr. Wijeweera’s abysmal performance in the 1982 election created a crisis in the JVP. The party’s reversion to a more Sinhala-oriented line was arguably a reaction to the shock of defeat. Yet going the armed revolution path was never on the JVP’s agenda even then. Had President Jayewardene not extended the life of the existing parliament (in which his UNP had a five sixth majority), the JVP would have contested the next general election (scheduled for 1983), won a few seats and settled down into standard parliamentary existence of reform and compromise.

Not only did President Jayewardene postpone parliamentary polls. He also banned the JVP. It was that criminal error which led to the second JVP insurgency (the insurgency’s racist, brutally intolerant nature was the JVP’s choice alone).

Perhaps President Dissanayake is where Mr. Wijeweera would have been had parliamentary election not been postponed and the JVP not been banned. Unfortunately, the JVP’s commendable evolution on matters economic has not been paralleled in the ethnic problem arena. The NPP was remarkably reticent on the subject in its tome-like presidential manifesto. Listening to the JVP general secretary Tilvin Silva indicates the reason. Behind a non-racist façade, the JVP is as regressive about the Tamil question today, as it was in the past.

“After 1970, our major political parties became provincialized gradually,” Mr. Silva said in a recent TV interview when asked about the NPP’s unimpressive electoral performance in the North and the East. “This allowed new forces to come into being in the North, the East, and the plantations… Tamil parties in the North, Muslim parties in the East, plantation parties in the plantations… So these parties decided on how to vote. For example, the people of the North did not vote freely. They voted according to what the TNA decided.”

Not a word about how the supposedly national parties alienated Tamils via discriminatory policies and violence actions, nothing about the disenfranchisement of Upcountry Tamils, Sinhala Only, the race riot of 1958, the standardization of university admissions in 1971 or the brutal attack on the Tamil Language Conference in Jaffna in 1974. Nothing of that history exists in the JVP’s universe, according to Mr. Silva. He admits to the existence of a language problem. The rest is reduced to water, markets, schools and education.

Perhaps the most telling is how he explains the land issue. “During the war some left their lands. Then they couldn’t return. Those who stayed back grabbed the land. Now when the owner goes back someone else is in occupation. So there’s a fight. So the government must intervene, set up land kachcheris and solve the problem.” Not a word about the continued military occupation 15 years after the war ended, the military’s ongoing attempts to grab more land or the road closures which hamper ordinary life. So like the Rajapaksas.

Mr. Silva accuses the Tamil leaders of talking about the 13th Amendment and devolution to protect their own interests. “But people on the ground don’t want 13; they don’t want devolution of power…” Even if that argument is granted, what about the thousands of acres occupied by the military? According to the JVP’s reading, do the Tamil people want their land back from the military, or not? Do they want their roads opened or not? Do they want justice for their dead or not? If the JVP cannot understand those basic demands and yearnings, if the best solution it can offer is administrative decentralisation (under a de facto military occupation), the NPP won’t make much headway in creating a Sri Lankan nation. If Sri Lanka’s road ahead lies between a Sinhala government and a feudalist autocratic (and ineffective opposition), the next five years are unlikely to be all that different from the last 76.

(First published in Groundviews)

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School bags

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(Excerpted from Life is a Frolic by Goolbai Gunasekara)

The lives of school going children these days is so far removed from mine that kids of today may almost be living on another planet. Customs and attitudes today are weird. I watched with open mouthed amazement as granddaughter KitKat got ready for school.

First, she put her swimsuit into her school bag. This was followed by a slightly damp towel plus an extra shirt. A board game and a cassette were flung in after all this.

“Haven’t you forgotten something?” I ask somewhat bewildered by the contents.

“Oh yes,” she added her Tuck Shop pocket money. “Nothing else?” I inquired silkily.

KitKat distrusts politeness from me. She is more comfortable with a yell.

“Er… like what?”

“A school text perhaps? An exercise book or two. You DO intend to do some writing in school don’t you?”

She looks affronted but repacks her bag.

Now let’s take my day at Bishop’s far removed from the present. One never forgets the routine and discipline of parents half a century ago as opposed to the apparent laxity of today.

We were woken at 5 a.m. Bags were packed the previous night with parents reminding us of the necessary chore every five minutes.

“Have you packed your school bag?”

The answer was always yes. We dared give no other. And what went into this school bag? Only school related stuff of course. Parents checked. The parental grapevine was abuzz with the latest news that Lady ChatterIay’s Lover had been found in a grade 11 school bag. It was rumoured that Sister Gabrielle, our tall and gracious Principal, had looked at the novel and had to be revived with smelling salts. Bishop’s was an Anglican school but a few Anglican nuns were always around to be shocked by modernity.

On the dot of 6.30 a.m. if Father was in Sri Lanka in between lecture tours, he personally saw me off on my bike, from the back verandah. Su, my younger sister, was perched atop our own rickshaw parked alongside the car in the garage. Between puller Murthy and Su, was a running battle. Father knew this.

“Now, not a WORD to Murthy except a polite one,” he would caution sternly. Su tossed her pretty head. She enjoyed the rickshaw ride with two or three boys cycling alongside making appreciative comments. Murthy did not approve of silly romance. He raced from Rosmead Place to St Bridget’s at a speed Roger Bannister might have envied. Su fumed. It was just up one road and down the other after all.

Parents did not have cars on the ready to drop us. Many of us cycled – especially those who lived within a hoo gana distance from the school.

“It’s raining mother. Can Weerasuriya drop me?”

My Father did not like the thought of the car getting wet and remaining wet the whole day. He had no problem with me getting wet so the answer was predictable.

” Wait till the rain ceases and make a dash for it.”

Traffic was at a minimum. ‘Making a dash’ for anything was extremely easy. Besides which, one could always make use of a slightly damp look.

“Miss I got wet coming to school,” we would tell our Form teachers. A realistic little cough further enforced the idea that we were sickening for colds.

“Run to the sick room right now dear,” said a concerned mistress. She didn’t want us breathing germs all over the class for the next few days. Properly executed that visit to the sickroom could be dragged out to cover two periods.

Then there was the ‘bag search’. Unless they were School Prefects, girls were not considered particularly trustworthy. What am I saying. They were considered totally untrustworthy by every member of the school staff. Ergo, bags were searched once a week for ‘undesirable fiction.’

Of course, we read undesirable fiction but we had the sense not to leave these exciting tomes lying round in our school bags. There were other things – too sacred to even mention, which we tucked into our bras and discussed with bated breath. These were romantic missives which class beauties like Chereen received regularly and were delivered by help karayas like myself with no boyfriend of my own.

Granddaughter KitKat views my school days with disbelief.

“How did you stand it Achchi? Nothing happened in your time.” Ah but that’s what she thinks. We certainly had our moments.

(Life is a Frolic is available at leading booksellers)

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The NPP: A Month in Power

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By Uditha Devapriya

It has been a month since Anura Kumara Dissanayake assumed the presidency, a month since the NPP claimed its place in history as the first party from outside of the political establishment to win a presidential election in Sri Lanka. Two weeks from now, the NPP will face another election, this time parliamentary. Depending on the results it gets, we will know whether the people approve of the NPP’s actions over the last four weeks and if they want it to continue. The NPP’s call for a powerful government is, in itself, not alarming: no government can survive without a majority in parliament. Yet it will need to convince Sri Lankans that it is the party they need – the party not of power, but of change.

Paradoxically, that it hails from a non-elite background may prove to be more a challenge than a strength – and I am not talking about the parliamentary election only. In 2022, the NPP sealed its reputation as a credible voice of the aragalaya. It received the backing of sections of civil society, the youth, and other electorates, including the Sinhala peasantry and middle-class, which had voted for the SLFP or, more specifically, the Rajapaksas. It was no easy feat weaning them away from their traditional strongholds – the JVP receiving less than 50 percent of the vote shows that they did not totally succeed at this.

Yet now that it has absorbed these electorates, it must speak to them and act in line with their aspirations. In itself, this should not be too difficult a task. The NPP’s mandate, in its simplest formulation, is to relieve the suffering of the many. How it does this is left to be seen, but over the coming months, it will have to signal to people that it is capable of seeing that task through. However, it must contend with the fact that these electorates, so to speak, do not exactly align with each other. What NGOs demands, for instance, is not what farmers in Anuradhapura or Hambantota have in mind, or prioritise.

This partly explains the government’s confused response to the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). In the run up to the election, the NPP clearly stated that the PTA had to go. It did not explain how it would do this when in power, but it indicated that it would abolish the Act. Civil society favours abolition; nationalists, including those who prioritise security, from the military, probably do not. While promises and pledges need to be kept, regardless of the consequences of certain decisions, the NPP now has several groups to satisfy. Obviously, it feels it needs to make concessions, or adjustments, to some of its policies.

The NPP’s, and the JVP’s, shift to the centre was evident even before the election. Going by some of its recent appointments, including of corporate bigwigs, it is targeting the middle ground in almost everything it does. As Ramindu Perera points out in a recent analysis, the JVP shifted course after two attempts (2010 and 2015) of supporting common opposition candidates. In 2019, it framed itself as the alternative party – to the UNP and the SLFP-SLPP. However, without the Sinhalese middle-class vote, it could not win the race. It thus had to shift course somewhat in the next few years.

It is significant that Dilith Jayaweera’s comments on the suitability of certain candidates in the NPP and his questioning of their national(ist) credentials has led, not to a blowback from the NPP, but rather a shift within the NPP over the issues he addresses. The pro-Rajapaksa nationalist crowd were fond of demeaning the JVP as unpatriotic, of depicting them a group of radicals hell-bent on erasing Sri Lanka’s Buddhist heritage. Nothing that JVP MPs have said or done over the last three, four years warranted such criticisms – and to its credit, the JVP itself struck back at them. However, upon coming to power, the NPP has disappointed those who thought it would undermine Sri Lanka’s culture and way of life.

On closer inspection, of course, none of this should come as a surprise. In 2005, the JVP backed Mahinda Rajapaksa’s candidacy based on their position on the war: like Rajapaksa, they supported a military solution. When Rajapaksa, being the shrewd politician that he is, weaned away the JVP’s electorate from the JVP, the latter positioned itself in opposition to him and his family. Towards 2010, they began rebranding themselves as the party of anti-corruption, even while fundamentally supporting the government’s campaign against the LTTE. By 2015, with an upsurge in anti-Rajapaksa sentiment among even SLFP supporters and the youth, they squared the circle by both campaigning against the Rajapaksas and not explicitly endorsing the common candidate, Maithripala Sirisena.

The latter decision benefited the NPP immensely when Sirisena, with the UNP under Ranil Wickremesinghe, undermined the yahapalana government’s mandate. However, given the upsurge in security concerns after the 2019 Easter attacks, and the Joint Opposition’s deft mobilisation of nationalist sentiment against the yahapalana regime’s supine liberalism – represented not by Ranil Wickremesinghe, but rather Mangala Samaraweera – it could not seize the moment. A few NPP supporters at the time told me that they decided to support Gotabaya Rajapaksa instead of Anura Kumara Dissanayake, for tactical reasons – not because they did not trust Dissanayake, but because they felt he could not win.

This brings up another point. Liberal civil society always had an uneasy relationship with the JVP. They had an uneasy relationship with Ranil Wickremesinghe as well, but although Wickremesinghe’s liberal credentials were suspect even during the ceasefire, they preferred to overlook his limitations and promote his peacemaker image. They were much less lenient with the JVP. English newspapers from that period, especially those aligned with the UNP, are chock-a-block with editorials and columns censuring the JVP’s stance on the war and its militant past. Indeed, the JVP was blackguarded every week, almost every day, particularly after it received ministries from Chandrika Kumaratunga.

The situation has clearly changed today. Civil society, even if one includes only NGOs and the development sector in Colombo, is not what it was back then. The older, genteel liberal intelligentsia has given way to a more vocal, articulate, bilingual activist class. They may be funded – as much of civil society is, and as the aragalaya itself was – but they are more attuned to the NPP’s radical-centrist vision than the fossils of the UNP. Yet on certain issues, they remain as steadfast as their predecessors were. And one of those issues, which the NPP has effectively blotted its copybook with, is the PTA – which young and old activists, from Colombo and elsewhere, continue to deride. For the youngest generation out there on the streets, the PTA brings back memories of arrests during the aragalaya. For older generations, including my parents’, it brings back memories of the war.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act, thus, is not something that can be magically swept aside or forgotten. One can argue that it is unfair to expect the NPP to do overnight what successive regimes have failed to achieve for the last 76 years. Yet promises on issues that unify several electorates, and several generations, cannot be backtracked – and if they are, the NPP runs the risk of losing face, as it somewhat has. Social media is of course by no means an accurate gauge of public opinion, but judging from NPP supporters who have taken to Twitter to berate the party over its communique on the PTA, it is clear that the government needs to clarify its stance immediately – or else.

The NPP, like other parties, is evolving. It has never been the governing party, but that does not mean it has no experience in governing. Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Vijitha Herath were both Cabinet Ministers under Chandrika Kumaratunga. In choosing Harini Amarasuriya as Prime Minister, they have broken several glass ceilings. I believe that if the government is to keep up this momentum, it needs to stick to its manifesto. Of course, on certain issues – notably the IMF agreement – it has room to moderate itself, as it already has. Yet on more crucial topics, such as the PTA, which after all has been used against the JVP, it will have to stick to what it said and what it pledged.

For more than 30 years, Ranil Wickremesinghe played the part of the ultimate provocateur in national politics. Today, the NPP is in power. The NPP does not have the cynicism that Wickremesinghe and the Royalist Regency do. Yet that cynicism is not the preserve of that Regency. It can be appropriated by any group, and it can be misused – as Wickremesinghe did in 2024, and John Kotelawala did in 1956. The Royalist Regency is part of the “Deep State” in Sri Lanka. If the NPP is serious about breaking it, it needs to reread its manifesto and take stock of the people who supported it – and brought it to power.

Uditha Devapriya is a regular commentator on history, art and culture, politics, and foreign policy who can be reached at .

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