Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna: What Is It? Where Is It Going?
Writing as a former member of the JVP’s 1971 leadership, Ivan argues that the party now trading on the prestige of the April 1971 revolt is no longer the movement that fought it. Of the twelve-member Political Bureau only Rohana Wijeweera remains, none of the nineteen second-line leaders does, only two of the forty-one accused in the main case, and fewer than one in twenty of the 15,000 members of 1971. Ivan explains the old guard’s departure as the product of prison study, accuses Wijeweera of branding former comrades traitors and police agents, and describes a party without a constitution or conference, run by one man, whose young followers want only action.