-By LeN Colombo Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -14.May.2025, 11.00 PM) At the 60th anniversary celebration of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), now reborn in its avatar as the National People's Power (NPP), President Anura Kumara Dissanayake mounted the red-draped stage in Colombo not with the swagger of a strongman or the smugness of a statesman, but with something far more dangerous in politics — sincerity.
“I have the courage to take any decision to serve this country,” he thundered, sleeves rolled up, eyebrows furrowed with revolutionary gravitas. And for a moment, even the crows circling above the party’s anniversary rally seemed to nod approvingly.
If you’re the sort who measures a party’s achievements by champagne corks popped in five-star ballrooms, the JVP's six-decade saga may appear tragically underwhelming. No skyscrapers named after them. No golf courses. No offshore accounts in Panama. Just the small matter of two failed insurrections, years in detention, an encyclopaedic list of martyrs, and one improbable shot at governance that turned into a national political movement.
But make no mistake — what unfolded last week was not a sentimental retirement speech for a revolutionary relic. This was a political baptism by fire. And Anura Kumara, in his trademark roll-up shirt and unvarnished oratory, wasn’t just commemorating six decades of struggle. He was declaring that the revolution has moved from the underground cell to the Cabinet room. From clandestine Marxist manifestos to printed circulars in triplicate.
Welcome to the People’s Republic of Pragmatism.
Sri Lankan politics is many things: tribal, transactional, and more often than not, tragically theatrical. But above all, it is amnesiac. Here, history is something to be swept under the colonial carpet, especially if that history includes failed coups, dead students, or unsavoury alliances with left-wing ideologues who refused to dine at the neoliberal buffet.
Anura Kumara had no intention of allowing the 60th anniversary to be a Polaroid nostalgia tour. “There are people who sacrificed their lives,” he reminded the crowd. “People like Ganesan Pillai, in detention for five years.Sister Nandasiri, four and a half. Tilvin, the party secretary, seven years. Galapathy, who cannot even stand anymore because of what was done to his legs.”
It was a name-drop of pain. A guest list of ghosts.
Then came the zinger: Batalanda. That graveyard of truth. The torture chamber that must not be named. “Some went on TV and said, ‘Nothing happened,’” he said, clearly referencing the once-silver-haired architect of neoliberalism, now turned constitutional relic, Ranil Wickremesinghe.
But something did happen. The party remembers. And that remembrance, Anura insisted, is not an anchor but a compass. “Some say forget the past, begin a new chapter. But we cannot forget the past. Because it is the past that allows us to restart.”
He wasn't just offering a history lesson. He was making a subtle but sharp point: The JVP didn't gatecrash democracy. It paid its entrance fee in blood.
In the tongue-twisting politburos of Sri Lankan elections, “mandate” is a word that’s used as liberally as coconut in a sambol. Everyone has one. Everyone believes theirs is sacred. But Anura’s interpretation was more muscular.
“We have won the presidential election. We have won the parliamentary election. We have won the local government election. And whoever tries to distract that mandate — we will use every legal means to enforce it.”
Translated: If anyone thinks they can play games, rig councils, or do a little political carpentry with the Constitution, they’d better bring a lawyer. Or two. The NPP, it appears, is not just a party of protests anymore. It is a party of processes.
It’s a curious transformation — one that would have given Rohana Wijeweera an existential headache. The JVP of yesteryear burned buses. The NPP of today debates bus timetables. The former carried Molotovs. The latter carries committee reports. But beneath the layers of governance-speak lies the same heartbeat: a desire to flatten the crooked hierarchies of Sri Lankan power.
Anura, to his credit, hasn’t forgotten that.
It was perhaps the most honest line of his speech. “We are a party that learns while working. Working while learning.” Try saying that in a Westminster dispatch box and watch the opposition collapse in laughter.
But in Sri Lanka, where politicians rarely admit ignorance and rarely learn anything except how to bribe in bulk, it was refreshing. Anura’s government, still in its toddler phase, is attempting what few others dared: governing without feasting. Appointing technocrats instead of nephews. Balancing budgets instead of balancing bank accounts.
And therein lies the irony: The JVP, once accused of trying to destroy the state, is now trying to salvage it.
There’s a temptation to see Anura’s transformation as a story of compromise. A sell-out. A former revolutionary, now rubbing shoulders with bureaucrats, speaking in development jargon, managing rather than overturning the capitalist order.
But to mistake evolution for surrender is to misunderstand the moment.
Sri Lanka doesn’t need another megalomaniac on a white horse. It needs a plumber. Someone who can fix the leaks, unclog the corruption, and make the pipes of the republic flow again.
Anura, with his oddly formal charisma and unfashionable earnestness, has positioned himself not as the charismatic saviour, but the national repairman. And in a nation exhausted by populist drama, that might just be his most radical move yet.
Still, there’s no denying the class war continues — just in more civilised attire. The same families who once said they had a "right to do politics," as Anura put it, still lurk in the shadows. The cigar-chomping industrialists. The plantation oligarchs. The feudal leftovers from Kandyan aristocracy who believe democracy is only safe when operated by dynasties.
Anura’s speech was a warning — politely delivered but steel-lined: “This party has a political ideology. We deliver practical solutions. We are a party of consequence and consensus.”
Translated for Colombo’s cocktail set: We’re not here to play. We’re here to govern. And yes, we remember everything.
Of course, no political fairy tale is complete without its devils. For the NPP, governance is a tightrope walk between idealism and the inevitable compromises of statecraft. Inflation doesn’t care about ideology. Nor do bond markets. Already, the usual critics are circling: Has the JVP gone soft? Is it too bureaucratic? Too slow?
There are risks. The public, having tasted revolution-flavoured governance, may tire quickly if change doesn't arrive in instalments. Sri Lankans are famously patient — until they’re not. Anura’s team will have to navigate not just the legacy of the JVP’s past but the perils of its present: coalition management, bureaucratic inertia, and of course, the island’s favourite pastime — political sabotage.
But for now, the public seems willing to give him time. As one old party stalwart whispered from the frontof the political rally , “We waited sixty years. We can wait six more months.”
It is rare in the annals of global politics for a Marxist insurgency to evolve into a democratic movement that actually wins power without purging its soul. But in Sri Lanka, everything is improbable — until it’s not.
Anura Kumara’s speech was not just a political milestone. It was an ideological coming-of-age. A declaration that yes, revolutions can mature. They can grow up, put on a tie (or at least a clean shirt), and still speak truth to power.
And as Sri Lanka teeters between hope and habit, debt and development, the next chapter will test not just Anura’s courage to make decisions — but his ability to live with them.
Because sometimes, the hardest thing for a revolutionary is not to pick up a weapon. It’s to put one down and pick up a pen.
-By LeN Colombo Correspondent
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by (2025-05-14 21:21:31)
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