Manifestos, promises and failures

The current government’s spectacular electoral success, was in essence a clear rejection of the chaos, incompetence and corruption, that were hallmarks of the traditional parties that have exercised dominant electoral power since Independence in 1948.

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The remarkably successful Aragalaya was an atmospheric rejection of the old parties and a refreshingly enlightened “System Change”. This was the unspoken reliance on the NPP (a lightly disguised JVP).

The unsavoury history of the unimaginable and intolerable violence of the JVP, imposed by individually cruel ragalia-tion by Government forces, thankfully faded out around the last decade of the 20th century, is still a feared eventuality, in the memories of those who experienced the primitive, Marxist, most of the currently alive youth, had not even been born at the time. But the fear lingers. It is not unusual that the current NPP leadership, is none too eager to remember that period of history, nor to market this memory.

The shift into oblivion of the LSSP, is perhaps a signal that the era of sloganeering and “catch phrases of Marxist verbiage” as electoral currency, is now past.