topic: JVP

මෛත්‍රීපාලගේ භූමිකාව

Using a chess metaphor, Ivan describes Maithripala Sirisena’s defection from the government to become the common opposition candidate as a move the Rajapaksa camp never expected. He assesses the MPs who crossed with him and the split in the SLFP, the roles of Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe in the anti-Mahinda alliance, and the JVP’s stance. He urges the challengers to avoid lies and communal appeals, credits Mahinda Rajapaksa with defeating Prabhakaran, but argues that his rule has done great harm, including its pro-China policy.

විරුද්ධ පක්ෂ ව්‍යාපාර අරාජිකත්වයේ සෙවණැලි

Ivan warns that full anarchy, the end state of a system without civility, is frightening, and that the coming election is a historic chance to defeat the Rajapaksa regime. Comparing the JVP’s support for Mahinda in 2005 with today, he assesses the roles of the Venerable Sobitha’s movement for a just society, Karu Jayasuriya, the UNP, the JVP and the Jathika Hela Urumaya, and argues frankly that Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has never won an election and lacks Mahinda’s charisma, should not be the challenger.

ජවිපෙ ප්‍රහාරයට පිළිතුරක් (ලංකා පුවත්පතේ පළවූ විවේචන දෙකට පිළිතුරකි.)

Ivan answers two attacks in the JVP paper Lanka by a writer calling himself ‘Kasakaraya’ (the flogger), who branded him a fraud and accused him of preparing the ground for Ranil Wickremesinghe as he had for Chandrika Kumaratunga in 1994. Calmly, he replies that he began writing books in prison after 1971, recalls Ravaya’s 25th anniversary, explains that the Kaha Pati campaign arose from the violent North Western provincial election of 1999, and states that his aim is not to install any leader but to win a framework for changing the political system.

අර්බුදය මට පෙනෙන හැටි

Replying to a reader who said he blames everything on the executive presidency, Ivan traces the crisis further back, to a crisis of thought. Buddhism became confined to the Sinhalese, and independence came without a mass struggle, so the new state inherited narrow limits. He follows the distortions through to 1977 and beyond: the crushing of the 1980 general strike, the burning of the Jaffna library during the 1981 district council election, the 1982 referendum, and Black July, blamed on the JVP, which pushed both Tamil and Sinhala youth towards violence.

එකක් කඩතොලු වසා ගන්නට ගොස් දෙකක් කඩතොලු හදා ගැනීම

Ahead of the March 2014 Human Rights Council session, where the High Commissioner was to report on Sri Lanka, Ivan warns that the government is making things worse by putting the President himself at the head of the Geneva fight. He compares the two JVP risings and the LTTE war, three youth rebellions crushed by force, and argues that after defeating the LTTE Mahinda Rajapaksa had a rare chance to heal the nation and win international respect, but instead undermined the rule of law and turned manageable problems into international crises.

අන්තෝ ජටා බහි ජටා

Ivan asks why more than a hundred thousand deaths in two insurrections have left so little mark on Sri Lankan thought and literature, recalling conversations with Simon Navagattegama and Ediriweera Sarachchandra and a sharp exchange with Sugathapala de Silva. He argues that caste, not only race and class, drove both rebellions: Wijeweera and Prabhakaran came from parallel non-dominant castes and drew their foot soldiers from oppressed ones. Only Premadasa grasped this, and the chance to rebuild society after the LTTE’s defeat has been squandered.

වැරදුණේ කොතැනද? පැරණි වම හා නව වම

Marking N.M. Perera’s 106th birth anniversary, Ivan rejects the view — shared by the Frontline Socialists about the JVP — that the Left failed by abandoning class struggle for coalition politics. The old Left’s leaders were middle-class intellectuals of great learning, as Mick Moore described, and able administrators: Anil Moonesinghe made the CTB profitable and handed commission cars to the board, while Leslie Goonewardene refused Yugoslav money. The LSSP might have beaten the UNP in 1947 had it not opposed the war and fled to India, and lacked a Gandhi to hold it together. Its real error was believing socialism could be built through coalitions and abandoning its minority-rights policies; Colvin R. de Silva told Ivan the 1978 Constitution was better for minorities than his own of 1972. The JVP had devotion but no study, and should use parliamentary politics to pursue achievable reforms.

පෙරටුගාමී පක්ෂයේ ස්වයං විවේචනය

Amid the decay of every party, Ivan reviews the newly formed Frontline Socialist Party through its 445-page book on the JVP’s path from 1978 to 2012, billed as a self-criticism but really a critique of its parent party. Its young members are committed, he says, but their thinking still lives before the fall of the Berlin Wall, ending with Lenin on the dictatorship of the proletariat. The book romanticises JVP culture without asking why idealistic youth became executioners in 1988–89. He traces a thread through the JVP’s history: after Wijeweera’s disappointing 273,248 votes in 1982, the party never found a leader the public would accept, backing Rajapaksa in 2005 and Fonseka in 2010 for want of its own candidate — a dilemma rooted in race, caste and religion. The FSP must put knowledge before action.

ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණේ දෙකඩවීම

Prompted by a 71-year-old reader in Kandy who hoped the JVP’s breakaway ‘people’s struggle’ group might revive Marxism, Ivan reflects on Marxism as a secular religion whose paradise collapsed with the socialist world, leaving devoted followers stranded. He remembers his lawyer and friend Suranjith, who gave years to the Communist Party, and the short story he wrote in prison after 1971 predicting that Mao’s own people would one day strike his statue. He recalls Leslie Goonewardene’s view that the LSSP split merely scattered a brilliant young generation — a warning for the new group — and argues that the old Left’s intellectual, liberal-democratic tradition deserves respect, that Wijeweera’s rejection of it was wrong, and that the dissidents stop their self-criticism short of Wijeweera and the two insurrections.