Tilvin Silva, general secretary of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP or People’s Liberation Front) of Sri Lanka, is seen at the party’s headquarters in Colombo on November 15, 2024, after the party-led alliance secured a landslide win in the island nation’s parliamentary elections.  
| Photo Credit: Meera Srinivasan

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna [JVP or People’s Liberation Front], which leads Sri Lanka’s ruling National People’s Power [NPP], could not have risen to power without widening its appeal and building a mass support base over the last few years, and the current political moment affords the party a chance to rewrite its history, general secretary Tilvin Silva said.

“When you want to obtain power, you need a mass support base,” he said on Friday (November 15, 2024), just as the NPP’s resounding win in the November 14 general elections became evident. Speaking to The Hindu at the party’s headquarters in Battaramulla near Colombo, Mr. Silva called the election win “a huge achievement”. “In particular, the victory in Jaffna and in the upcountry area, where we were able to defeat deeply entrenched traditional parties and political families. This gives us a real chance to build a united country,” he said, referring to the JVP’s historic win in the Tamil-majority northern district.

The party that once vehemently opposed Tamils’ political rights won three seats in Jaffna, outdoing traditional Tamil parties that were the community’s main voice in national politics. In Nuwara Eliya district, in the central hill country that is home to Sri Lanka’s famed tea estates and Malaiyaha Tamils who toil in them, the NPP won five seats and nearly 42% of the vote share.

Barely two months after President Anura Kumara Dissanayake was elected President, the NPP fought Thursday’s (November 14, 2024) election knowing it would win. “Even those who were sceptical of us earlier began seeing that we were very committed to rebuilding the country, its political culture and economy,” Mr. Silva said.

Broadening the base

“We began appealing to more people just in the last one and a half months.” However, the NPP did not project a two-third majority, which is hard to obtain in Sri Lanka’s proportional representation system. On election day, Mr. Dissanayake said he expected “strong representation” in parliament, and that two-thirds would not be necessary.

Mr. Silva told local media on Friday (November 15, 2024): “We did not ask for a two-thirds majority. The public believed in us and gave us this power. Our responsibility is to carefully use this power and to safeguard their trust.”

Set up in 2019, the NPP is a broad social coalition rather than a conventional electoral alliance of different parties. It identifies as a “political movement”, comprising 21 diverse groups, including political parties, youth and women’s organisations, trade unions and civil society networks. The JVP remains its chief constituent, making up its political core. All the same, party general secretary Mr. Silva did not run in the elections, deciding to keep the party and government separate.

“The main problem in our country was the political culture. The foundation of the grave economic crisis we suffered was this very political culture,” he said, referring to political parties and groups “fighting bitterly” in the past for state resources, vehicles, “to enrich their own families”.

“If we want to defeat that culture, we felt it was important to keep that distinction between the party and the government.” On the relationship among the party’s influential politburo, the NPP, and the government, he said: “It’s not as if we’re different political groups taking different decisions. We work as one unit [on policy matters].”

Past vs. present

The JVP has seen considerable shifts in the last five decades. The party with Marxist-Leninist origins led two armed insurrections — in 1971 and in 1987-89. Its ideological emphasis changed from Marxism and redistributive justice in the 1970s to Sinhala chauvinism in the 1980s, when it resisted power-sharing with the Tamils.

However, Mr. Silva contended that the party’s history needed to be retold with context. “There is a wrong perception because our history was written by those who defeated us, the victors. Our path was not willingly chosen, it was forced upon us.” Alluding to the allegations of brutal violence facing the JVP, he added: “It was not [our] action, but a reaction from our end. If the [state’s] repression was armed, so was [our] response.”

In his view, the current political moment in Sri Lanka has opened up space to rewrite the story of not just the party, but also of the country, “without characterising some as terrorists who took up arms for no reason”. “But we want to tell this story not with words, but with our action. The present context gives a chance to do that.”

Queried on concerns among sections that the “Marxist party” might resist the Dissanayake government’s efforts to take forward the ongoing programme of the International Monetary Fund aimed at addressing Sri Lanka’s debt vulnerabilities, Mr. Silva pointed to “misconceptions” about Marxism. “It is not a set philosophy. Marxism is really about providing answers to people’s problems at a particular time and context. We are committed to doing that through development, eliminating rural poverty, rooting out political corruption, social justice and national unity that is important for our country. We want to build a clean and beautiful Sri Lanka.”