The President and the JVP

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February 1, 2006
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Victor Ivan argues that unless Mahinda Rajapaksa resumes talks in defiance of the memoranda he signed with the JVP and the Jathika Hela Urumaya, war will return. He has already tested the limits: Norway remains facilitator despite an undertaking to remove it, talks look likely outside Asia against a condition that they be held within it, and Anton Balasingham has been summoned without objection. But Ivan doubts the JVP will let him go much further, and explains why its leaders cannot retreat even if some now privately doubt their own conditions — admitting error would expose them to their own members as politically shallow, so they must keep defending a position that no longer fits. The President's first problem, he writes, is choosing between the JVP and the country. He then draws the parallel with Chandrika Kumaratunga, freed from the UNP's encirclement by the JVP only to find herself in its prison instead, and notes that Rajapaksa faces the same choice in far better conditions: the UNP fragmented, its alliances weakened, and the LTTE no longer friendly to it.

If President Mahinda Rajapaksha fails to soon resume the peace talks disregarding the provisions in the Memoranda of Understanding entered into with the JVP and the Jathika Hela Urumaya, resumption of a dreadful war will be inevitable. 

It will not be easy to ignore the JVP’s conditions totally and it will also be very difficult to win the LTTE’s confidence too at this moment. Although both of them may be tough tasks, it will not be possible to prevent a war without overcoming those two difficult challenges. 

Mahinda Rajapaksha has been able to disregard to some extent the terms and conditions he has entered into with the JVP, but it is unlikely that the JVP will permit him to disregard them totally. Ignoring the understanding of removing Norway from the role of facilitator, the President has allowed Norway to continue to function in that role. Although it might not have pleased the JVP, that party did not go so far as to stand up against it. 

The President is now compelled to act even disregarding the JVP’s condition that the peace talks should not be held in any country other than an Asian country. He has also permitted, without facing any objections, the summoning of Anton Balasingham. Although the JVP might permit the President to go some distance disregarding its own conditions, it is unlikely that the JVP would permit him to go as far as he wants to. 

There were differences of opinion between the JVP and Mahinda Rajapaksha before the presidential election. However, during the presidential election campaign, the JVP followed a policy of exerting itself to the maximum for Mahinda Rajapaksha’s success. Although it was not due to the JVP that the people voted for Mahinda Rajapaksha, the JVP functioned as his election machine. It is not possible for the President to act in disregard of that role played by the JVP, and it is also not possible for him to remain shackled by the framework set by the JVP. The critical problem that the President has to solve before all other problems is to decide which to choose, the JVP or the country. 

It will be quite laudable if the President can continue with the alliance with the JVP and go for negotiations with the LTTE. However, it is an impossibility. It is not clear even for the JVP what to do now, and it is also not possible for it to totally withdraw the conditions it has imposed on the President. Perhaps some of the leaders of the JVP themselves might now be feeling those conditions are not realistic, but the JVP leaders are unlikely to have the strength to admit before their party members that their own perspective had been incorrect. If they make such an admission, their party members will consider them to be a group of infantile leaders with no political depth. Consequently the JVP leaders will have to continue declaring that their stand and the conditions imposed on Mahinda Rajapaksha are correct, and to continue defending those conditions, and to act accordingly. If Mahinda Rajapaksha continues disregarding those conditions totally, the JVP will have to stand up against him in the same manner as it stood up against former president Kumaratunga. 

On the other hand, although it will not be possible for President Mahinda Rajapaksha to easily forget the support given to him by the JVP, it is also not possible for him, as the head of state, to remain forever trapped by the JVP’s conditions. Although the JVP is a political force with decisive power in this game of politics, there is some kind of immaturity in the way it sees things. Their ideas do not suit the existing political reality. 

The JVP performed an outstanding role for President Mahinda Rajapaksha’s triumph. The JVP had performed a similar role to free former President Kumaratunga when she was surrounded by the UNP. There too, at the initial round, all that might have pleased former president Kumaratunga, but she quickly realized that the group who had freed her from the UNP’s imprisonment was now keeping her in their own prison. With that she had to give up her friendship with the JVP and push herself into a position of fighting against it. Now President Mahinda Rajapaksha finds himself in the same position that former President Kumaratunga had found herself then. 

However, it must be said that Mr Mahinda Rajapaksha has an advantageous environment which former president Kumaratunga did not have at that time. At the time when President Chandrika began quarrelling with the JVP, the Opposition was in a strong position. There was great unity in the UNP. The SLMC and the TNA too were with the UNP. 

However, the conditions that prevail before President Mahinda Rajapaksha now are different. The UNP is fragmented and cannot be put together again easily. The alliance that the other opposition parties had with the UNP too is in a weakened position. The LTTE too is in a state of having abandoned its friendship with the UNP.