Radical Tamils will appreciate JVP mass actions

Last week Lakbimanews head lines screamed

"JVP vows to short circuit power bill"

and added

"the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna is up in arms over the proposed Sri Lanka Electricity Draft Bill to be taken up in Parliament on June 17 and would opt to disrupt the functioning of the house in order to prevent the controversial bill being passed by parliament."

Then in addition there is news in circulation that the JVP trade unions will come out on strike at the end of this month if their demand for a 5000rs salary increase is not met.

While these events are predicted for the coming period, the JVP has already come out to demonstrate against the rising prices and growing corruption. Today the economic demands cannot be separated from the political demands. Whether JVP leaders like it or not, their mass actions will coincide with the struggle of the Tamil speaking people for freedom.

Their Chilaw demonstration has been attacked mercilessly by a group of thugs organized by some government politicians. Even women were attacked while there was no police to intervene.

At the same time joint teachers' struggle, this time backed by the JVP, forced the government to close all schools.

This shows that a fantastic situation is developing through out the country. We explained in this column that the split in the JVP will necessarily push the party to clash with the government on economic demands.

But today the economic demands cannot be separated from the political demands. Whether JVP leaders like it or not, their mass actions will coincide with the struggle of the Tamil speaking people for freedom.

It will be appreciated by the radical Tamil masses, and on the other hand, hated by the Sinhala racists supporting the government. Mahinda regime, fully committed to the war and doing every thing to inch away into the Tiger territory, will be angered like a hungry tiger and will pounce on the protesters. What happened at Chilaw is only a small sample of what to come.

Today when Mahinda and Rathnasiri are screaming for help from all to finish the last bit of their sacred war, JVP leaders have leaped over our shoulders to announce strike actions that could blast both the government and its war efforts.

........Well, this is exactly the situation that revolutionaries were waiting for. All this time, from the time of the so-called Probation Government, the JVP became the most reactionary brake within the working class.

JVP leaders in the past claimed that Sri Lankan state is an unstable weak national state, still under the pressure of the imperialists. According to their ill founded theory the LTTE is an alien force driven by imperialists to destabilize the national emancipation. Hence it is unrelated to the issue of discrimination, and ill treatment to Tamils.

Wimal Weerawansa took this theory to its logical conclusion, by coming out to back the Mahinda regime, and to become the grand pundit of nationalism. However the Sinhala poor masses at the bottom cannot tolerate sufferings created by the war and the global capitalist destructive policies. So, these masses have virtually ripped away the party to a position of hostility towards the government.

In Marxian terms this is a contradiction between the ideology and the praxis. Plebeian masses in actual practice are challenging the chauvinist ideology of the party leaders. These leaders, who once claimed that at any cost masses should support the war against the LTTE, are today preparing or at least voicing the biggest attack to ruin the war efforts of the government.

JVP leaders, who named us as treacherous rats who are selling the country to get few dollars from NGOs, are today making preparations to give the biggest blows to their once patriotic regime. At that stage we were called traitors for participating in peace marches and rallies. All attempts by us to organize strikes and demonstrations were denounced as willful treachery to patriotic efforts of the armed forces.

Well, this is exactly the situation that revolutionaries were waiting for. All this time, from the time of the so-called Probation Government, the JVP became the most reactionary brake within the working class.

True it is not a proletarian party, and never was it. But as a plebeian party based on Sinhala poor villagers it had a strong influence among a layer of new proletarians. Without this youth, no work place could be fully organized to fight for a living allowance to match the inflation.

Such a solution to inflation will bind the cost of living allowance to the rate of rise of inflation. JVP taking a stand against the government, will seriously change the mood of the working class. While agitating for economic demands, workers will make political demands as well.

Very likely they will demand that the agenda of global capitalist development, which destroys the social gains of workers, should be abandoned. They insist for democracy and media freedom.

Now, all these demands are taken, at least nominally, by the JVPers that come into streets to challenge the government.

It is premature to say that the JVP leaders have abandoned Sinhala chauvinism to launch a struggle in parallel to the Tamil liberation struggle. But circumstances have pushed them exactly in to such a battle position.