Whose crown?

President Anura Dissanayake addresses the JVP’s 36th commemoration of November Heroes on 13 November

There were no millennials, solitary or plenty.  It was for those who knew the history of the movement or what they presume to be its history.  It was pointedly a JVP event. It was decidedly not an  NPP event

“Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.”

― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. (Young Karl Marx was a devoted student of Hegel)

The JVP held its 36th commemoration of November  Heroes at the Viharamahadevi Open Air Theatre on 13 November. The  stage arrangement - ‘mise-en-scène’, the bright red painted background with a single large beaming figure of Rohana Wijeweera wearing a Che Guevara Beret with a white star (Che’s Beret star was deep red).

The stage accommodated the party’s Politburo and Central Committee heavyweights. It was theatre for the core ranks of JVP veterans.

There were no millennials, solitary or plenty.  It was for those who knew the history of the movement or what they presume to be its history.  It was pointedly a JVP event. It was decidedly not an  NPP event.

First, I must offer an explanation.

I was a fervent advocate and adherent of Anura Kumara Dissanayake for the Presidency.  While I do not have regrets (I am turning 84 and do not hope to be around for any kind of general or presidential election) I am deeply sceptical of the capacity, composition and ‘weltanschauung ‘of the predominantly monolingual, organic intelligentsia that got swept in to power on the sheer charisma of President AKD.

JVP too must reinvent itself

If my observations suggest elite disdain for those who as Professor Sunil Ariyaratne’s lyrics suggest – ‘Is daring to dream of a new world  a punishable offence’, I offer an unqualified apology. Only a brighter and determinedly more secular emancipatory movement can challenge this regime.  

I would gladly concede that this Government of President AKD has made the rule of law a living breathing reality.

For the first time in the history of post-independence rule, power has moved from the wealthy and well connected to normal ordinary people, unassertively insisting on personal dignity.

The JVP too must reinvent itself. It cannot be cocooned in class antagonism and plan on championing transformational technology. It cannot preach equity while frowning on wealth creation. If we want Direct Foreign Investment, we must have a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with India. If we wish to be a gateway to South Asia, we must have a surface link with the Subcontinent. To be truly global we must disabuse our minds of the cosmic origins of our tribe.    

President AKD’s address to the core cadres of the party that were in attendance implied that the party was in power.  He followed with a sermon on the long march through untold misery and adversity to arrive at the seat of power – JVP’s arrival at the ‘Finland station.’

Rohana Wijeweera 

So, it is time to tell the JVP that if Rohana Wijeweera paid some attention to Fitch Ratings, ratings of Standard & Poor and other rating agencies   the nation would have been spared of horribly scarring heart burns that still corrode the naively moral breasts of many of that generation.  

He referred to their fallen comrades during their life-or-death struggle. He also referred to comrades who abandoned or betrayed their ideals.  The hyperbole on the sacrifices made by their brave comrades, and betrayal of some reminded me of a passage in Arthur Koestler’s ‘Darkness at Noon.”  

“The Party denied the free will of the individual - and at the same time it exacted his willing self-sacrifice. It denied his capacity to choose between two alternatives - and at the same time it demanded that he should constantly choose the right one. It denied his power to distinguish good and evil - and at the same time spoke pathetically of guilt and treachery. The individual stood under the sign of economic fatality, a wheel in a clockwork which had been wound up for all eternity and could not be stopped or influenced - and the Party demanded that the wheel should revolt against the clockwork and change its course. There was somewhere an error in the calculation; the equation did not work out.”

The Crown

I reproduce this passage in reverence to at least two idealistic minds who did indeed sacrifice formative years of their lives sharing the JVP’s quest of an equitable utopia.    

President AKD addressed the commemoration both as the Country’s President and as the leader of the JVP. It received wide coverage on electronic media and  Sinhala Broad Sheets.  I could not find an English version of his discourse in the Presidential Media Division. For the purpose of this short missive,  I rely on the news report published in the Sinhala Daily ‘Lankadeepa.’

President AKD  made some  startlingly penetrative assertions about pursuit, exercise and holding state power.

“wfma T¿jg Tgqkakla jegqfka l=Kq ldkqjla osf.a .yf.k weú;a fkdfõ.”

“The Crown that fell on our head is not one that drifted down a filthy sewer.”

He went on to remind his party loyalists that for 36 years the party had memorialised its founding heroes as a movement in pursuit of power. ‘Today, having assumed power, we speak of them as our heroic trail blazers.’  

Sorry.  It is a thinly disguised attempt at suppressing half of the truth, implying a falsehood. The JVP did not seek power. It was the broader alliance of the NPP that promised a thriving nation and a beautiful life.

I have no desire to engage in a theoretical trapeze act with ‘comrades ’commemorating their fallen. But history, especially living and present history should not be distorted.

It is the leaderless horizontal protest movement which we called the ‘Aragalaya’ that paved the path towards an inevitable rejection of politics as usual by forging an alliance between the poor and hungry many and a fickle middleclass deprived of fuel to run their vehicles, power their deep freezers and air conditioners.  

Rational debate

Engaging the JVP in a rational debate at times can turn in to a walk across a  veritable mine field.

Some time ago, Saliya Pieris PC  wrote that there are moments in state craft that turn out to be points of no return – crossing the Rubicon , and that such decisions must be made with ‘wisdom and with long  term interests of the country in mind. It received a prompt rejoinder from JVP front bencher and theoretician Bimal Rathnayake.

He responded  that the people crossed the Rubicon some eleven months earlier. “People of Sri Lanka crossed the Rubicon 11 months ago spearheading a movement to make Sri Lanka a true Republic.’

Now, elections have consequences. But to claim that 42.31 % of the vote represents an entire nation ferrying itself across the Rubicon is bit too much.

If Shakespeare is right Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon  spurred  his horse with the words ‘Let the Dice Fall ‘!

When we think of a crown, the image that comes to mind is often absolute power. Crown is not a modern mark of royalty. It is untrammelled power. It represents power, resilience, and even personal transformation. That is what JR’s executive presidency intended

Organic intellectuals 

At this point in time we cannot afford to ‘Let the Dice Fall.’ The IMF wouldn’t let us play Dice!  

So, first of all the Crown did not fall on the collective heads of the Central Committee or the Politiebureau of the JVP. Secondly the Crown did not drift down a rotting sewer.

 A nation weary of political horse trading gave a razor thin  margin to President AKD in a three cornered contest. Elected President his performance in the interim three months was a mesmeric accomplishment in governance. It was a supremely  refreshing breeze of politics with a difference.

That gave him a two thirds majority in Parliament. The NPP appeared to present what the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramchi  called an organic ideology.  

The ’Argalaya’ was wickedly suppressed by Ranil Wickremesinghe the handpicked choice of the rotten regime.

But the organic intellectuals – the social agents who stood for change  were not totally supressed . They quietly retreated in to measured hibernation.

When elections were held there was an alliance of the ‘subaltern’ classes and individuals and groups   of  politically  and economically different classes on a simple ideological discourse -  ‘anything is better than what we have had todate.”

This unified alliance is now crumbling. The Minister of Industries wants  hungry people to turn entrepreneurial and not rely on Aswesuma. The Trade Minister wants the market to regulate prices of essential foods. The Minister of Agriculture thinks that funny quips  are enough to contain post- harvest waste of peasant toil. More aberrations may come. I hope my misgivings will not come true.  

Revolutions

The JVP was not a Marxist party. It never was. Rohana Wijeweera thought he learnt Marxism in the Soviet Union. As historian Eric Hobsbaw cannily points out It wasn’t a workers’ state” “nobody in the Soviet Union ever believed it was a workers’ state, and the workers knew it wasn’t a workers’ state!  

People confuse Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalism with his predictions for the future of capitalism. Karl Marx was brilliant in his analysis. His predictions for the future of Capitalism were based on his abhorrence of the inhuman misery of workers in factories/sweatshops in 19th century European cities in the early years of the industrial revolution.  

He was a brilliant analyst of history and historical trends. He was also a very confused prophet in attempts to predict the future trajectory of capitalism.  

Dr. N.M. Perera’s teacher Harold Laski’s essay on Marx is a must read for students of Economic history.

“No name in the history of social ideas occupies a place more remarkable than that of Karl Marx. Save Machiavelli and Rousseau, no thinker has been the subject of a condemnation so unsparing, and, like Rousseau, it has been his fortune to preside after death over a revolution conceived in his name,” wrote Professor Laski.

Those revolutions carried out in the name of Marxism triumphed briefly with the ‘Sputnik’ despite their authoritarian systems.  Then the Berlin wall collapsed. It was the end of the bipolar world.  

Two decades before the collapse of the Berlin wall, President Richard Nixon unilaterally abrogated the Bretton Woods accord. When the US made this momentous, unilateral move in global financial architecture the US Treasury Secretary made the celebrated remark “The foreigners are out to screw us. It is our job to screw them first”  

President AKD insists that the economy is stabilised and we shall repay our debts on time as we have solemnly agreed to. He should read Professor Kenneth Rogoff’s book ‘Our Dollar, Your Problem’.  

It is a tome of 350 pages. Published after Trump’s return to the Whitehouse.  The concluding paragraph is reproduced below.    

“If one learns nothing else from examining the evolution of the global currency system over the past seven decades, it should be that surprising changes can and do happen. If runaway US debt policy continues to crash up against higher interest rates and geopolitical instability, and if political pressures constrain the Federal Reserve’s ability to consistently tame inflation, it will be everyone’s problem. “

Kenneth Rogoff is a brilliant Economist. Long before he became a celebrated Economist, he was a Chess Grand Master.  

Our apparel workers make approximately Rs. 50,000 per month. The same apparel worker if located in Rumania will make double that. I have seen local advertisements by some Job Agencies on Sinhala News TV channels. I live close to the ‘Passports office.’ The economy is stable. Young people still queue up in search of jobs beyond our shores. “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” said Shakespeare.  

Why did President AKD use’ Crown’ as an allegory for power?

When we think of a crown, the image that comes to mind is often absolute power. Crown is not a modern mark of royalty. It is untrammelled power. It represents power, resilience, and even personal transformation. That is what JR’s executive presidency intended.