THE JVP is back. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, the party with Marxist roots which fuelled two failed insurrections in the country in 1971 and 1987-88 that led to the killing of tens of thousands, has emerged as a key player in the Sri Lankan political arena following the recent elections to five provincial councils.
The ruling People's Alliance (PA) won the highest number of seats in all the provinces in the 6 April polls, but it faced a tough contest in two of them. In the densely populated Western Province, where a quarter of the country's people live, the PA and the main opposition United National Party (UNP) each won 44 seats, and in the Central Province, the second biggest in terms of population, the PA took 24 as against the UNP's 23. And due to election rules that give the highest vote-getter in all five provinces two bonus seats in each of the provincial councils, the PA ended up with the most seats. Even so, the balance of power in the Western Province (which includes the Colombo metropolitan area) will be determined by the JVP, which won eight of its total haul of 15 seats there.
For the moment, the party which once said "a plague on both your houses" to the country's two contending power groups, has no plans to prop up either side even in return for provincial ministerial offices. "We are not supporting anyone to form a government," said JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva after the results were declared. "But we will use our power to work for the country and support development."
That may be easier said than done, for the jvp has a gory past to come to terms with first. During the 1970 elections, the then emerging JVP helped Sirimavo Bandaranaike and her United Front (UF) sweep the elections. The UF alliance — the precursor to the present PA —included the country's old left, the Trotskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party, with Bandaranaike's own centrist Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) calling the shots. But a year later the JVP had turned against the government and launched its first insurrection. Armed with home-made bombs and shotguns commandeered countrywide, JVP fighters of both sexes, many barely out of their teens, captured police stations in many parts of the country in a surprise onslaught in April 1971.