The anatomy of a damp squib

In the history of left wing politics in Sri Lanka never has so much been promised, so loud and for so long and hardly anything achieved, as we saw last Thursday when the JVP-UNP alliance launched its one-day strike.

To the JVP it was like a passing out parade in the field of trade unionism, demonstrating its dominance in a field where once the old parties of the left help sway, signaling that it has more than come of age to lead the working people of Sri Lanka. But, it was not to be.

For the UNP it was the much awaited show of strength to demonstrate that the people were with it in the moves to overthrow the Government and bring in a UNP administration, and in the process show there was no real challenge to the leadership Ranil Wickremesinghe. That too was not to be.

What the people saw was a pitiful lack of public support for two political parties that were trying for some time to make a case for being the chosen instruments of the people in their desire to defeat this Government.

The UNP saw in the trade union field the possibility of the success that has been eluding it so far in repeated electoral contests.

The JVP with its great show of embracing the democratic process (which seems questionable judging from some of its recent actions) saw in the strike the opportunity to show that it would be the rallying point for the forces that it believed were lining up to defeat this Government, to be replaced by the JVP’s own brand of “nationalist policies”.

Kolambata Kiri

Whatever the JVP’s trade union wing may say about the strike being a 75 per cent success, the clear observations on the ground were that it was a dismal failure. It was the kind of failure that would lead to agonising reappraisals or extensive soul searching in any left wing or Marxist political party that gave the leadership to it.

It stands on end the belief that has been allowed to grow in the minds of the people that the JVP has unquestioned leadership in the trade union field. In a single day the people have shown that however much the JVP may be good at sloganeering and catchy and blunt posters, it is very far from having caught the imagination of the people as a party that can give true leadership even to the organised sections of the working people.

The days of left wing romance of slogans such as “Kolambata Kiri - Gamata Kekiri” are clearly over, and the JVP is now faced with the uneasy prospect of re-branding itself as an organisation that has some credibility among the people, before it seeks to lead any others in a front to set up a new Government in the country.

The statistics of the failure of the strike are already common knowledge and do not need repetition. Suffice it to say that public transport was not in any way interrupted, there were no Government departments that had even a fifty per cent drop in attendance, the health services were functioning, and the Port of Colombo - the Lal Kantha’s bastion - was loading and unloading as usual, while in some schools there was a drop in attendance, due to a combination of warnings by teachers the previous day that children should not be sent to school, and the natural caution among parents who feared some violence associated with the strike.

In fact, in most Government offices there was better attendance than normal and those who travelled by rail saw trains arrive sharp on time unlike on other days; which would give some justification for those in Government to think it may be better if there were such strikes everyday, purely for the sake of good productivity in the public sector.

Guinea pig workers

The smooth flow of public transport and the hum of activity in Government offices on a day on which the people were made to believe that everything would come to a halt, has prompted the most prominent figure in the strike leadership, K. D. Lal Kantha, President of the National Trade Union Centre which claimed that 660 trade unions joined the strike, to make what must be the most shocking statement to come from any trade union leader on the outcome of a pre-planned strike. Unable to accept the magnitude of the defeat, Lal Kantha has said that July 10 was only a trial balloon.

It was only a means to learn how the employees of the State and private sectors, and the plantations, would respond to the call to strike, and also to properly assess the public response to the strike.

Admitting the failure of the strike and stating that there would be another day of reckoning can be understood from any leader of substance.

But having built up the mood for this strike, which was intended to challenge the strength of the Government, it is an admission of betrayal of whoever that did respond to the call to strike to say that what took place was not even a rehearsal for a bigger event ahead, but only a means of studying the response of the workers to the call to strike, and also the public’s own response to it.

It is an admission that the JVP is totally out of its depth in matters of trade union leadership, and was completely ignorant as to how the members of its own trade unions would respond to the strike call, until the statistics were gathered on July 10.

Had the strike been even a little more effective, and had the Government too responded with more strength towards it, the strikers of July 10, 2008 would be no better than those of July 1980, all because Lal Kantha and the JVP did not have any idea as to what response its call to strike had with the workers it claimed to lead.

This statement make it evident that the JVP has treated the workers as mere guinea pigs in its own political laboratory to better understand its own strength vis-…-vis the attempt to overthrow the Government. This is not the stuff of good trade union leadership, and it also calls into question the very qualities of political leadership of the JVP.

Such an attitude is a far cry from any democratic political leadership, and can only come from cabals that control political parties, using the people, as pawns for their own narrow political purposes.

This does not make the JVP any more the representative of the working people of Sri Lanka, than the LTTE’s claim of being the sole representative of the Tamil people.

Public mood

The public response to the strike was very clear. Voting with their feet, as it were, by coming to work in such large numbers, they sent out the message to those who were seeking political glory through this strike that this was not the time for such a confrontation with the Government.

It is not that the public servants who rejected the call to strike would not have liked a Rs. 5000 pay hike.

Although they are facing considerable difficulty in making ends meet, they were also convinced that at a time when the Government is engaged in a major military offensive to defeat terrorism in the country, with credible results of success seen, and when the Government rather than abandoning all development work on the altar of war, was engaged in considerable development work, the need of the hour was not to strike against it.

All the rhetoric of confrontation in the past few months could not face up to this reality of the public mood. The statistics of those who reported for work on July 10 show that those who called for this strike are persons or parties totally out of sync with how the people of this country think and feel.

The allegations they make against the Government of waste and corruption may have some resonance with the people; there is no doubt considerable improvement is possible in the management of the economy, and the people are not immune from the hardships caused by the rise in fuel prices, that has caused much trade union unrest in other countries.

Yet, the overall view of the people is that not all of that justifies a confrontation that is aimed at stymieing the efforts of the Government to defeat terrorism, and also that the people are prepared to wait longer to see the results of the many development moves that have been initiated by the Government, especially in infrastructure development such as power generation, road and bridge building, development of the East and the many other areas of development that impacts on the people.

This attitude of the people convinced many observers from the outset of this strike move that it would not be much of a political explosion, although many believed it would lead to a more modest bang. But in reality it ended up as a monumental damp squib in trade union history.

Tactics

If the strike leaders failed to understand this aspect of the public mood, there were also many issues of organisation that made the people have doubts about the honesty of their cause. If there had been some acceptance of the JVP’s leadership of this strike when it came out with the demand for a wage hike of Rs 5000 per month, there were many questions raised when the UNP decided to join the strike, and for all purposes the JVP was glad to accept its embrace.

For the first time two political parties that apparently had nothing in common between them for the past 40 years and more, were suddenly seen coming together, with no ideological or programmatic convergence, for what many saw was a naked expression of political greed.

The UNP’s presence in the promised “struggle” did nothing for the JVP’s image but further damage what was already dented, while it pushed away many workers who may be pro-left in their thinking but are decidedly anti-UNP.

As the date of the strike approached and the UNP had is own impact on strategy and tactics, JVP’s Lal Kantha came out with a statement that raised serious doubts about the purpose of the strike.

His statement that the strike would be called off if the Government conceded four decidedly political demands, that had nothing to do with the initial wage demand, made even those who would have supported it for economic reasons or trade union solidarity decide to think twice about it.

The first of these demands was the calling off of the NCP and Sabaragamuwa PC elections, while another was the full implementing of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. Getting the people enthused about the 17th Amendment to the point of striking for its implementation showed the distance the JVP-UNP combine had moved away from the public mood. Even worse was the demand for calling off of the two PC elections.

This gave the clear impression that cannot be far from wrong that both the JVP and UNP were trying to use the threat of the strike to avoid what they saw as possible defeat in the polls. This gave credence to the suspicion raised in many quarters, and noted in this column too; that the alliance struck by the JVP and UNP for this strike would in fact extend to closer collaboration in the two PC elections.

New alliance

What the new “left - right” alliance thought would be a masterly bargaining ploy against the Government, in fact played right into the hands of the Government and its own strategists, who waited till the eve of the strike to come out with its posters and media campaign highlighting wholly the political nature of the strike, and its vital departure from the initial wage demand that sought to harness the support of the working people.

Once this political cat was out of the bag there was no way that Lal Kantha, for all his eloquence or threatening rhetoric could convince the people that the strike was not a ploy to achieve the political purposes of the JVP and UNP, two parties that are foundering in popularity and riven with inner party differences.

The end result for the JVP was a vivid demonstration that is not party that has a large political following in the country, apart from a substantial number of committed cadres, and is not attracting much new support.

What was seen in the Local Government polls of March 2006 was underlined by its failure last Thursday, and it also causes problems because it is now clearly not the master in the trade union field, although it has the capability, not through solidarity alone, to act with some strength in individual trade union disputes or a show of strength involving university students, both in and out of robes, who do not make and important political grouping or base.

There is no doubt that the JVP would also have felt the absence of Wimal Weerawansa from its ranks, with the absence of his eloquence and individual appeal among the people, as well as his organising capabilities. The loss of at least 12 MPs from the party to the ranks of the NFF would also have weakened the JVP in this “struggle” for its own image projection, and no doubt will continue to haunt the party in its future activities.

If the JVP saw the reality of the public mood and its own position among the people for the first time, for the UNP it was a repeat performance of its continued failure to effectively reach out to the people.

Having failed in the bullock cart and horn blowing protests against the high cost of fuel and living, and in the wake of its defeat in the first EP polls, the UNP tried to gain popularity by joining the JVP, in the most unprincipled political alliance of our times. Little did it know that far from gaining any popularity, all it did was to administer what may be the Kiss of Death to the JVP.

The Green Storm Troopers of the JSS who were so effective in attacking strikers in the July 1980 strike, even if present were unable to get its own members to walk out on July 10, 2008. Its weakness on the trade union front after the departure of Gamini Lokuge and others to the Government ranks is now evident.

It will now have to think of other means to grab the attention of the public, with Janaka Perera and Ranjan Ramanayake having to work on overdrive to sustain public support in the NCP and Sabaragamuwa.

What was planned as the time of reckoning for the Government has turned out to be much worse for the JVP and UNP together. The overall result of all the efforts by the JVP - UNP alliance in launching this strike has been to give the Government a clear victory, which will stand in good stead for many more months.

That should be good food for thought for the strategists of the JVP and UNP, in working out how they could in fact reach the people and convince them of any need to defeat this Government. That is certainly no easy task today.