Wijeweera’s legacy

Editorial-June 26, 2014

Lewwegoda Walawwa in Bandarawela, where JVP founder leader Rohana Wijeweera was arrested before being put to a violent death in 1989, will be handed over to the National Youth Services Council (NYSC), Minister of Youth Affairs and Skills Development Dullas Alahapperuma has said in Badulla recently. Wijeweera was responsible for staging two abortive uprisings where thousands of young lives were destroyed, as is common knowledge, and whatever he owned should be vested with the youth.

By a strange quirk of fate a self-styled revolutionary leader who claimed to champion the cause of the proletariat and spilled a great deal of blood in a bid to overthrow the capitalist system happened to be arrested while hiding in an aristocratic mansion in cooler climes. Interestingly, even those who conduct grand ceremonies to commemorate Wijeweera year in year out let their leader’s ancestral house in Kottegoda go to rack and ruin. It has collapsed according to our information. (Why the JVP did not consider conserving it as a museum is the question.)

Minister Alahapperuma’s statement has brought back horrific memories of savagery we witnessed in the late 1980s. Thankfully, the JVP has metamorphosed into a democratic party over the years and is currently led by a parliamentarian and former minister! It is not likely to repeat its past mistakes—at least we hope so. But, the root causes of youth unrest which fuelled its two insurrections are far from eliminated in spite of much-advertised claims by successive governments to address them. Most political leaders and policymakers haven’t even leafed through the Presidential Commission on Youth report which contains a host of valuable recommendations if how they are mishandling issues affecting the youth is any indication. State universities are a case in point. They became hotbeds of JVP terrorism owing to undergrads’ frustration which Wijeweera et al tapped effectively to give their anarchical project a turbo boost.

Today, Minister of Higher Education S. B. Dissanayake claims to have rid most of the universities of JVP activists and some leadership training is given to university entrants as part of a government strategy to inoculate them against radical politics. But, the undergrads’ problems have gone unsolved and their resentment finds expression in aggressive protests. Some faculties remain closed for months on end and none of their grievances are redressed by university authorities unless they take to the streets.

Unemployment is also a source of worry for the educated youth without political connections. Wijeweera’s JVP, it may be recalled, preyed on the unemployed or underemployed men and women. It coined an attractive slogan to attract the resentful youth desperate for jobs: Kellanta Garment, Kollanta Pavement—‘Garment factories for girls, pavement-hawking for boys’. The state sector recruitment has become the preserve of a cabal and plum jobs are reserved for political lackeys. Merit has long ceased to be the criterion for employment in the public service.

The LTTE and the JVP succeeded in recruiting a large number of youth and brainwashing them into unleashing mindless violence mainly because they were disillusioned with the main political parties which offered no solutions to their problems and they were left with no democratic alternatives. Prabhakaran and Wijeweera may be pushing up daisies, but there has been no discernible change on the political front. Corruption, abuse of power, cronyism, nepotism, political violence and a culture of impunity continue to characterise national politics. The democratic Opposition is lying supine and the government is bulldozing its way through.

The handover of Wijeweera’s mansion to the NYSC, we repeat, is a step in the right direction. Let Lewwegoda Walawwa serve as a reminder to the present-day politicians that they have failed to address the issues that gave rise to the JVP’s bloody revolts.