NEWS BACKGROUND
Speaking as the topic of ‘The Proletarian solution to the present crisis’ at Kandy’s YMBA Hall last month Rohana Wijeweera berated and ridiculed the conception of a United Left Front. As his point of departure he took the article in the Lanka Guardian of Oct 1st on ‘Left Unity: Problems and Prospects’. Denying that there were differences in the JVP concerning relations with other Left parties, Wijeweera rejected the notion that there was a need for a programmatic unity of all Marxist organisations and asserted instead that the building up of the JVP as the strong revolutionary party of the proletariat was the task of the day. He made it perfectly clear that the present ‘coming together’ of 5 left parties was for the strictly limited purpose of agitation and propaganda on the basis of the three key slogans. It was a joint effort to protect democratic rights and was in no way a united front. Using a favourite metaphor he said that the JVP ‘bus’ would halt for five minutes and those of other left groups could disembark from their own buses, leave behind their drivers, and hop aboard the JVP bus where there was some room at the rear for such passengers.
Contrary to the hopes of the other Left parties and rank-and-file progressives, the ‘5 party bloc’ is turning out to be exactly the kind of limited detente that the JVP leader spelled out in Kandy. The most painfully obvious proof of this is the unseemly squabble among the Left over nominations for the Galle by-election. “The five parties launch a pair in Galle” cackled the SLFP’s widely read Dinakara, using a catchy Sinhala headline that loses much in translation. “March separately; strike together” is the Trotskyist conception of united action, but these chaps seem to be marching together and striking separatly, or rather, speaking together and voting separately” said a bemused Maoist veteran.
The trouble started when Wijeweera, with a studied casualness, announced at a top level meeting of the 5 parties, the JVP’s intention to field a candidate at Galle. He also sought confirmation as to whether the NLSSP would put forward Vasudeva Nanayakkara. Then on September 26th, while addressing a large crowd at Sugathadasa Stadium on the issue of ‘The Journey’s End of the SLFP’ Wijeweera announced the condidacy of Lionel Bopage Politbureau member and defacto deputy leader. In Kandy a fortnight later, he told the crowd that the JVP Politbureau had nominated him to handle the Galle campaign.
The other Left parties responded belatedly and confusedly. Already Wijeweera’s rather undiplomatic conduct at the Oct 2nd Hyde Park meeting (L. G. Oct 15th – Trends) had raised eyebrows and tempers including Mr. Bala Tampoe’s. Only Mr. Vasudeva Nanayakkara’s NLSSP made the sensible response of writing on October 18th to the other 4 parties urging discussions with a view to putting forward a single Left candidate. Privately the NLSSP lobbied for a candidate who would be representative of the working class and who could be backed by the JCTUO Action Committee. CPSL’s L.W. Panditha was mentioned in this connection.
Predictably, the appeal fell on deaf ears, as the L.G. commented in its issue of November 1st, (Ill winds from Galle) the JVP’s unilateral move paradoxically helped strengthen the fraction within the ‘old’ LSSP leadership which is far more interested in a coalition with the SLFP than in Left unity. SLFP–LSSP discussion were held to settle on a mututally acceptable candidate and the name of the “nationalist” ex army officer Prasanna Dahanayake (a nephew of W. Dahanayake) kept cropping up. But SLFP inner party dissension has caused rifts in the party organisation at Galle and on the other hand pressure from the LSSP’s left partners mounted. And so, the ‘deal’ fell through, especially when Prasanna Dahanayake demurred.
SLFP is said to have decided on Sarath Dias, a former Police officer who had earned a very ‘tough’ reputation in April 1971.
Then, in a dramatic move, the LSSP played the ‘Podi Athula’ card. “This is the smartest manoueve the LSSP has staged since 1964. I didn’t think they were capable of this kind of tactical flexibility” said a usually anti-LSSP campus don of radical persuasion. By any standards Podi Athula is a very good pick indeed. A student of St. Aloysius College Galle and former Jesuit seminarian, he was once a prominent JVPer whose right hand was mangled in an accidental bomb blast. At the CJC trial he was one of Wijeweera’s foremost detractors and the CJC trial judges were so impressed as to remark that he was the most colourful personality to stand in the dock. Sentenced to 8 years R.I. he served 6 of them. Athula came to the attention of the LSSP leaders with his book on the April Insurrection which was a searing polemic against Wijeweera (L. G. Oct 15th; November 1st). An independent Marxist with strong principled views on the National (Tamil) Question (L.G. July 1st) he has cordial contacts with all sections of the Left, including the NLSSP and JVP breakaway ‘Janatha Sangamaya’. A prolific reader and polemicist, who has also published articles recently in the ‘Aththa’ as well as the (Maoist) ‘Desha Vimukthi’, Podi Athula has friends among radical Christian clerics, too. Born in Akmeemana, he has local support and is something of a hero to the youth of the area.
Clearly a candidate capable of rallying broad Left support as against the UNP and SLFP he offers the LSSP a chance of giving the “sectarian” JVP a suitable …