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Bread and circuses by Cicero

As the year burns itself out, to use a phrase of T.S. Eliot, a new political configuration looms on the landscape. It is not yet clear what shape exactly the new alliance between the SLFP and the JVP will assume but what is clear is that this will be the trump card which the anti-UNF forces are expecting to use in the new year.

Whether if such an alliance emerges it will receive the support of the LSSP and the CP is also not clear although this is highly unlikely given the track record of the JVP on the ethnic issue.

Both the LSSP and CP are supporting the peace process although with reservations about the LTTE's expansionist project and it is unlikely that such a stance can be reconciled with the JVP's outright opposition to the peace process and the UNF Government.

On the other hand any SLFP-JVP alliance will strengthen the hands of the Anura Bandaranaike wing of the SLFP in the light of Mr. Bandaranaike's appearance on the anti-peace platforms with the JVP's Wimal Weerawansa who has been photographed in what amounts almost to a pose of deference to the portly SLFPer who has now inherited the mantle of Chief Organiser Gampaha district from his sister, the President. What effect this will have on the fortunes of the Leader of the Opposition Mahinda Rajapakse, who shares the same power base as the JVP in the deep South, is also not clear yet although on a television news cast on Thursday night he did give guarded support to such an alliance.

Mr. Rajapakse's argument is that what is necessary right now is the widest possible alliance of forces arrayed against the United National Front Government and that the JVP coming into such an alliance can only strengthen it. Of course, the SLFP will be ready to sacrifice the LSSP and the CP, which are weak both electorally as well as politically vis-a-vis the JVP, but what the SLFP must not forget is that by going into an alliance with the JVP (in whatever form) it places in jeopardy the SLFP's own identity.

Historically, the SLFP has been a party based on the twin planks of nationalism and socialism, one of these tendencies augmenting itself at the expense of the other during various periods. When Mr. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was alive it was the nationalist tendency which came to the fore. When Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike was in alliance with the LSSP and the CP (in their heyday) the socialist tendency was considerably strengthened and with the ditching of these two parties in the mid-1970's the Right Wing of the party got the upper hand.

The party split right down the middle when Vijaya and Chandrika Kumaratunga left to form the Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya (whatever happened to the SLMP, the President's original party ?) under the banner of socialism.

Then in 1994 (with Rightists such as Anura Bandaranaike conveniently out of the way) Chandrika Kumaratunga took the SLFP by the scruff of its neck and instantly converted it to a party of pluralism committed to a resolution of the ethnic problem.

This was nothing less than revolutionary within a party which had been born as a Sinhala nationalist entity and was hated even by the moderate Tamils for its policy of Sinhala Only and the first communal riots of 1958 which broke out under its Government. Mrs. Kumaratunga introduced the new Constitution which upheld the Union of Regions (a Federal solution by another name) and launched a peace cavalcade named the 'Sama Thavalama' although its chief organiser Mangala Samaraweera is today making rude anti-peace noises. Now by joining with the belligerent JVP President Kumaratunga will be shattering with a single fell blow everything she had built up over the last eight years.

There is no doubt, however, that man of the stalwarts of the SLFP will be comfortable with such a situation. In fact during the last few years many of the leading SLFP Cabinet Ministers seemed distinctly unhappy with the position into which the President and manoeuvred them. Except for a handful such as G.L. Pieris and Mangala Samaraweera she could not find front-bench spokesmen to champion what a hostile press dismissed as her 'package'. Now with this about turn most SLFP leaders will be quite at home again thumping the Sinhala Buddhist and anti-Tamil tub.

But the point is what will be the differentiation between the SLFP and the JVP in such a situation? How is the SLFP going to react to the peace process? What will be its solution? Will it repudiate its own proposed Constitution which mind you the JVP opposed? Is it advocating all-out war again? All these are relevant questions in the light of the proposed alliance.

Again on the economy the two parties will find themselves at loggerheads. While the JVP is committed to a full-blooded socialist economy (if such exists in this dark night of socialism) there is little difference between the SLFP and the UNF when it comes to economic policy most starkly illustrated by the presence of such luminaries as G.L. Peiris, S.B. Dissanayake and Mahinda Wijesekera in the UNF's ranks. The 'human face' which President Kumaratunga promised to give the economy under the PA's banner was little in evidence much to the chagrin of former LSSP Minister Batty Weerakoon, perhaps the last Marxist within the PA today. In such a situation the SLFP will again be threatened with an identity crisis in the event of an alliance with the JVP.

However the SLFP has sound reasons for going into some kind of alliance with the JVP at the moment. One is the realisation that the UNP has only been defeated when all the anti-UNP forces have acted in combination. This was true of 1956 and 1970 with July 1960 as an aberration dominated by the personality of the widow Sirimavo Bandaranaike.

The other is the realisation that the JVP, although being novices to Parliament, is fast outstripping the SLFP in its parliamentary performances. Many SLFP MPs are reportedly unhappy that the party has been forced to play second fiddle to the JVP's fledgling parliamentarians.

But again the question is who will gain more by such an alliance. The SLFP might be aiming to kill two birds with a single stone but the JVP is quite capable of turning the tables on it as it did at the tail-end of the PA Government almost crippling it with its impossible demands. Numerically the SLFP is the larger group in Parliament but qualitatively the JVP can give it a good fight. What is more there is the danger that many of the younger SLFP MPs might drift towards the JVP in a heightened political situation.

It is also worth keeping in mind that part of the SLFP's problem in Parliament today is that of leadership. Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapakse is being baulked at every turn by those who would challenge his parliamentary leadership. The President herself regularly presides over SLFP parliamentary group meetings raising the question of divided loyalties among the backbenchers.

Again Rajapakse has been projecting the image of a radical southern leader which can only bring him into collision with the even more radical JVP which is competing with him on his own turf. So while a SLFP-JVP alliance (in whatever form) can temporarily rejuvenate the anti-UNF forces it can also lead to grave repercussions for the country's main opposition party.

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