Congratulations on winning the election under the National People’s Power. The coalition won an impressive 61% of the vote count and more seats than any other Sri Lankan party in the entire history of the country. How did the People’s Liberation Front (JVP), coming from just 5% of the vote in the last election, achieve this impressive result—was it due to new party structures and strategies, or did the history of the JVP in the minds of the masses play a key role?
IW:
Both, history of the JVP and the new movement. The establishment of this new electoral front under the National People’s Power. Friends may or may not know the conditions under which we established ourselves, so I will explain: Sri Lanka’s social development was different from Europe, we didn’t transform from a system of slavery to one of feudalism to a capitalist system. A capitalist system did not naturally develop in Sri Lanka like it did in France or the rest of Europe: our period of feudalism was interrupted by British colonialism.
British colonialism introduced an artificial economic system with its own rules and amendments that impeded us from developing naturally into capitalism that would have brought with it industry and large-scale services. As a result, our country still has conservative economic issues such as a caste system, as well as other feudalist mentalities and bureaucracy.
This kind of condition makes it more difficult for a social revolution, the Sri Lankan system is easily able to exploit ethnic and religious divisions in order to distract the masses from their economic problems. While this issue still exists under all capitalist countries, it is much easier to disseminate this idea in a country like Sri Lanka where feudal characteristics exist as a result of colonisation.
The Sri Lankan left movement began in the 1930s from the children of the elite class who had studied the ideas of socialism in British universities— initially led by people who were not from the working class. Once we got our freedom from British colonialism, the dominant capitalist party maintained a close connection with British colonialism. By the 1960s, the left movement joined with the capitalist parties to form an alliance, this abandonment by the existing left movement in the country created a space for a rejuvenated new left movement. Alongside this, with the Soviet-China split, meant that socialist theories were often discussed in the public.
This culminated in the creation of a socialist party in 1965 as the People’s Liberation Front. Created by comrade Rohana Wijeweera, a medical student who abandoned his studies in order to create the JVP. We purposefully avoided the name socialist or communist in our party name, as the word communist did not hold much trust among the public. Comrade Rohana had espoused that we needed to create our own unique path of Marxism-Leninism, one that was not tied to affairs of the Soviet Union or China.
As a Marxist-Leninist party we faced oppression and bans from capitalist governments, which resulted in two instances of armed conflict— neither was our choice as they meant we were too entrenched in conflict that we could not plan a path to win power. We picked up our weapons for self-defence, not to take power. As a result, we were unable to take power in both instances.
However, from the beginning of our Party we had multiple fronts, we organised: farmers; women; labourers; trade unions; students; and more. Our party had branches for each of these fronts, even including Buddhist monks. We educated all these fronts on a political education relating to our country and how we can win power as a class. This meant we also fought alongside multiple fronts, especially the student front. We believe that the flame of a revolution comes from the student movement. It was easier for us to organise students compared to other social groups since they are located in one place with fewer family and work commitments. So, for us, the student movement was a key role for us.
In terms of a public front, we didn’t market ourselves as people who want to establish socialism but as people who want to give power and rights to the farmers, students, all of our fronts. Once these people join and develop within our party, they understand that for true change we need to change the entire system.
Following the last instance of armed struggle that ended in 1989, our entire Central Committee and leadership were killed, as a result we reinvented our strategy to remain concentrated to take power through electoralism. During this period, we focused on growing our multiple fronts and even those who opposed us came to respect our principles and discipline in our organisation compared to the elite class and corrupt politicians that dominated politics.
By winning and succeeding on a local level at council elections, we were able to slowly build up trust among the people to be effective and successful governors. Similar to Britain, we had a two-party system and people only voted for a party based on who they think will win, not who they like – even though we opposed corruption and fought for economic justice it did not matter so we lost in general elections.
By 2022, the Sri Lankan economy was officially declared bankrupt. This affected everyone, from the poorest to the well-off. As we were already organised on a grassroots level, we were able to explain to the people that our current system would result in bankruptcy before it even took place— patiently we explained why the bankruptcy happened after it took place.
At this point, the majority of people joined our side and kicked out the President. The two-party system dropped its illusion and combined into one party when they noticed the masses were with us. These two parties had to join in order to protect their class, people then understood that the two parties were the same and the only movement offering a difference was us.
As a result, we formed the NPP as our public front, an extension of the JVP, most of the western media recognises this as a coalition, but it isn’t, it’s a single party with one constitution – the core is made up of the JVP with involvement from leftist and progressive fronts. This party was the one that won a landslide in the last election. That was our route to power.
What are the main aims of the current government, what are its priorities it seeks to resolve over the next couple of years?
IW:
This change of political power is a form of revolution for us, not a violent revolution, but the working class are in power. All the representatives of our party are representatives of the working class. As with any other revolution that has happened across the world, the ruling class that lost their power are attempting to seize it back.
We only gained political power by electorally winning certain sectors of the government, since we didn’t do an armed revolution, we didn’t get the entirety of state power with the ability to kick out any officials we don’t like, so our current goal is to seize the whole state power by following existing traditions and laws.
In the short term we are not establishing socialism immediately, instead, as Lenin spoke during the October Revolution, we want to provide land and bread, in other words to provide people’s basic needs after a period of deprivation. People also expect us to govern properly following a government filled with corruption, if we are to maintain the masses than we need to get rid of this mismanagement. We also expect to utilise existing institutions to reach out to the working class, which can be a challenge.
In the long term, we seized power when our country is in bankruptcy. So, we are not in the same conditions as Germany or Britain or France, which Marx said would adopt socialism more easily. Our country is probably worse than Russia just before Lenin took over— we are completely bankrupt and tied to IMF agreements by the previous government. We all know how countries work with the IMF, we don’t expect something magical.
Even if we remove the IMF agreements it is not enough because it is not sustainable— we would collapse again into economic debt, another party will take over and start all over again, this is how it is structured. We need to build up our industries and production. For instance, our main source of foreign revenue comes from Sri Lankan diaspora— around £6 billion per year. Foreign investment accounts for another £1 billion per year.
This is not a sustainable form of income for an independent country. At the moment we are pushing for a production-based economy, we are leaving the borrowing-based economy. We will also ensure that this new production-based economy will be distributed fairly across the island. Exploitation will not completely end but we will ensure this wealth is distributed fairly and all people have the opportunity to integrate themselves in this new economy.
Our main goal is to increase production, economic expansion, and develop our industries. This hasn’t been a priority for a Sri Lankan government in decades. It will require some foreign investment in the form of capital as we have none at the minute, but it will build a sustainable economy.
Another goal is to resolve the past ethnic discrimination that has plagued our country. In Sri Lanka, there are 3 main ethnicities: Singhalese about 70%, Tamils about 20% and Muslims about 10% of the population. In the last 6 decades, our past rulers have exploited our cultural differences to maintain their rule and steal our resources by artificially manufacturing ethnic divisions and conflict to distract the people from the common enemy. As a result, we have a task to reconcile these differences, as any counter-revolutionary forces will utilise our long-term issues in ethnic conflict to overthrow our party and any attempt to build up the country.
There are many challenging tasks we have to do but we will face them all head on.
Sri Lanka has always been a vital geo-strategic country in the region, and as such it has often resulted in the intervention of imperialist powers— in 2019 the United States sought to establish their military inside Sri Lanka, for these areas to come into the command of the NATO military under the SOFA agreement, and they routinely criticise any Sri Lankan deals with whomever the United States views as a rival. How will the new administration in Sri Lanka respond to the rise of multipolarity, particularly in resisting U.S. intervention on internal affairs, and what is the stance on China’s role— will the NPP engage confidently with China regardless?
IW:
In our region, the main influences are from India– which can act as a representative of the US– and China. They both act in their own interests; India might buy one harbour then China might buy a dock in Sri Lanka. We have to act in our own national interests and that means we cannot allow ourselves to be used to attack one country or another. We cannot burn all bridges with India because they are such a close geographic partner with a lot of intersecting economic relations who have a past of intervening in our country.
At the moment our position is non-partial, and we work with both countries. We gave them both assurances that our land will not be used to attack either of them, neither China nor India. Yesterday India invited our President for a visit, today China visited our party offices.
RW:
It is a non-aligned policy; we are trying to keep them all happy— which is difficult, but it will provide us with advantages since we can work with all of them equally. For instance, India has offered to transfer their past loans as grants; therefore, we don’t have an obligation to pay them back. Meanwhile, China has offered to pay free school uniforms for all students in Sri Lanka. [He laughs:] This happened on the same day.
At this moment, we are navigating with our own national interest at the core. But we do have a very good long-term relationship with the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China.
With the victory in Sri Lanka, how does the Communist movement view its future under the coalition? Will it seek to establish a more independent communist revolutionary movement or retain electoral coalition tactics as its strategy?
IW:
Sri Lanka won’t be able to go through socialism alone, we are hoping in the next few years that our victory will give encouragement and stimulation to left progressives in the region such as in India.
This is the first time we have seen power like this change since Allende in Chile. At this time, our priority is to move the country forward towards a progressive direction: against racism and for economic development and justice. We have learned from Allende that we need to strengthen our class power within the state.
RW:
We are also not in a coalition like in a lot of liberal democracies that combine parties like Labour and Liberal Democrats. We are our own Party as the NPP, which is the JVP pushing forward all left forces in our country to a new era. But we as the JVP have not stopped growing our Party– we are still recruiting people from all across the country.
Berkan Çelebi, is a member of the YCL’s South Yorkshire Branch
