Frontline Socialist Party Propaganda Secretary Pubudu Jayagoda said that the recent comments by JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Kumar Gunaratnam could be an indication of the authoritarianism of the JVP leader.

 

At a recent interview on Hiru TV, Dissanayake said that Frontline Socialist Party leader Kumar Gunaratnam was never a JVP member. This contradicts many accounts and even an earlier statement by Dissanayake. Early this year, during an ITN Sathyagaraya program, Dissanayake told Upul Shantha Sannasgala that Gunaratnam did play a role in the JVP.

 

When asked about Dissanayake’s comments to Hiru TV, Jayagoda said that Dissanayake’s comment at the earlier interview with Sannasgala on ITN was the best answer to be given.

 

The recent comments could have been made due to a memory loss or due to a deliberate attempt to change the history, he added.

 

Elaborating on the matter, Jayagoda cited an incident from George Orwell’s book ‘1984’. The ‘Big Brother’ in the story burns old editions of newspapers which have stories about his opponents, Jayagoda recalled. Thereafter, the ‘Big Brother’ reprints the old newspapers again.

 

If Dissanayake was showing authoritarian behavior similar to the ‘Big Brother’ it should be taken very seriously, since the JVP has been championing democracy and good governance for so long, Jayagoda said.