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Introduction
The Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) is perhaps the most resilient, dynamic and deeply-rooted political force in contemporary Sri Lanka. It occupies a unique position in Sri Lankan political hagiography as an icon of 'anti-systemic' rage and youth radicalism.1 Formed during 1966-1967 as a small splinter group that emerged out of the Communist Party (Peking), the JVP had by 1971 recruited and trained thousands of young militants to launch the island's first anti-state insurrection for over a century. The April 1971 rebellion was quickly suppressed, with thousands of cadres killed or jailed,2 but the JVP survived to re-create itself as a parliamentary electoral party, and had by the early 1980s established itself as the third largest political force in the country.
In the mid-1980s, the JVP once again went underground, and by 1987 launched a second, far more violent and protracted armed insurgency which, for a brief period in early 1989, almost brought the government to its knees.3 This in turn invited a far more brutal and exterminationist response from the state security forces and shadowy pro-state militia groups, who, over the second half of 1989, hunted down and summarily executed tens of thousands of JVP cadres and sympathisers (as well as many thousands who were entirely innocent of association with the JVP). Between 1990 and 1993, the JVP appeared to have completely disappeared, and many believed that it would never re-emerge. But, within five years, it sprang back into life, and quickly established itself as a viable electoral party. Starting with one parliamentary seat in 1994, the JVP won ten seats in 2000, 16 in 2001, and 39 in 2004.
The JVP gained enormous prominence in the 2001-2004 period as the principal political force opposing the Norwegian-mediated peace process between the United National Front (UNF) government of Ranil Wickremasinghe and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). While the constitutional theatrics of toppling the Wickremasinghe government were actually enacted by President Chandrika Kumaratunga between November 2003 and February 2004, it was the JVP that did all the hard work in creating the conditions for the ouster. While Kumaratunga's own party lay dejected and exhausted after its resounding electoral defeat in December 2001, it was the...