It is true by the modern Gregorian calendar that every coming day is just another day. Yet, one day is set aside for workers across the world. So, in two days, we mark May Day. In Bread and Roses (2000 film by Kenneth Charles Loach), a low-wage janitor named Maya tells her exhausted sister: "They can have our sweat. But they can't have our dignity. Therefore, this day belongs to us." The line travels well beyond the screen. It sits easily in real life.
May Day, memory and the theatre of politics
In Sri Lanka, May Day lives in memory. Some memories still sting. A few still bring a faint smile. The closest is how the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) marked May Day before Covid-19 arrived. The parade moved from the Nanayakkara Atulugamage Stephen de Silva Jayasinghe Ground to the Burgher Recreation Club (BRC) Ground, long, loud, and impossible to ignore. From German philosopher Karl Marx to JVP Founder Patabendi Don Jinadasa Nandasiri ‘Rohana’ Wijeweera, faces looked down from giant banners, as if silently approving the march below. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and former President Junius Richard Jayewardene were turned into colourful caricatures, rarely flattering, never gentle. Politics had its own theatre, and May Day was the opening act.
Then came a quieter detail. When the speeches ended and the crowds moved away, comrades stayed behind to clean the grounds. Banners down, litter gone, order restored. Revolution, it seemed, also knew how to sweep. For years, no other Party matched that rhythm. On May Day, the JVP did not just wear red, they owned it.
Power, promises and the weight of expectation
But time, like a seasoned politician, changes its tone. Many of those comrades now sit in Ministerial chairs. The long march has shortened. The grand rally has shrunk into careful regional gatherings, less thunder, more microphone. So, the question remains: can the JVP still summon the spirit that once walked those long roads to the BRC?
They came to power with promises of change, correction, and a different way of doing things. People listened. People believed. Even now, many still wait. But between floods, shortages, and a restless world, expectations have learned to stand patiently in a queue.
In the Gospel of John, at a wedding in Cana, water quietly becomes wine. A miracle, yes, but also a simple answer to a very human need. Citizens are not asking for miracles. No one is expecting water to turn into wine. They are asking for the basics to move, one by one, as promised.
Today, this Government stands with numbers no recent administration has easily enjoyed: strong in Parliament, occupying over 70.7 per cent of the representation, and strong in Local Bodies, holding over 80% of power overall. Even without elected Provincial Councils in place, the National People's Power (NPP) still effectively holds administrative control, with Governors acting as direct appointees of the President, who is also the Leader of the NPP.
The machinery that does not move
And so, a question keeps returning: where is the blockage? There is an old African saying: "When the roof leaks, don't blame the rain." Perhaps the issue is not only what can be done, but what has not been properly understood about how to work with the system already in hand.
Discipline in speech and clarity in ideas seem to be the first hurdles. Anyone can make mistakes; that is human. But, the image planted in people's minds is something else entirely. The JVP did not promise to be human; it promised to be flawless.
Let us take one example. Deputy Housing, Construction and Water Supply Minister Tikiri Bandalage Sarath, with the additional portfolio acquired at the first reshuffle, on one occasion stressed his role as the Rajya Nayakaya (Government leader), in Polonnaruwa. On another, he suggested that tracing a hacker could take two months. These may sound like passing remarks. But, in politics, passing remarks have a habit of staying and multiplying. There are many such slips. Too many, in fact, to list without turning this column into a catalogue that nobody asked for.
What follows is predictable. Trust begins to thin, especially within the bureaucracy. Officials look not only for instructions, but for confidence. Leadership, after all, is not just about holding office; it is about sounding like you belong there. More worrying, there is little sign of correction. Mistakes happen. Silence after mistakes is what unsettles. At this rate, one is tempted to recall a Chinese proverb: "The fish that escapes is always the biggest one." In politics too, what is not corrected today has a way of growing larger tomorrow.
Then, there is this quiet phobia: the fear of breaking the vicious circle of the traditional bureaucracy. In the heat of the Aragalaya (a public political movement that sought a political system change), members of the Administrative Service came forward with proposals, clear, practical, and, for once, coming from inside the system itself. It felt like a golden window. The tide outside had forced even the system to look at itself.
Officials are part of the problem
At one such discussion, held at the Mahaweli Centre, a young participant from the protest stood up. No notes. No hesitation. He pointed at the officials and said, in essence, that they too were part of the problem that the collapse of the country was not built by politicians alone, but also by those who quietly enabled them. The room did not clap. But it listened. On the head table sat Ranjith Ariyarathne, today a Member of the Constitutional Council, nominated under the present arrangement. Guiding the session was Prabath Chandrakeerthi, now the Commissioner General of Essential Services. Time, as always, has moved people forward. The system, not so much.
After the Aragalaya, many believed the next Government would pick up those proposals and run with them. Instead, the file seems to have been quietly placed on a shelf, neatly, respectfully, and firmly out of reach. Even the authors of those proposals may not recognise them today. New office bearers. New files. Old ideas.
The 21st Amendment to the Constitution offered another opening, a chance, at least, to begin depoliticising the public service. There was discussion. There was debate. In the end, there was very little change. There is a Sinhala saying: the talk rides in the cart, but the journey is on foot. We have had many carts. Not much travel.
The story of former Russian President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin is worth a pause. The Economist once suggested that he could win elections almost anywhere outside Russia, but not necessarily at home. The Western media often went further, calling him the only man for Russia. Yet, when the real test came, he struggled to hold domestic political ground. Yeltsin focused mainly on economic transformation. But, the public service, the real engine of the State, remained largely untouched and unconvinced. Winning reforms on paper proved easier than winning the patience of those who had to carry them out.
Neither the Soviet Union President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, with his Glasnost and Perestroika, nor Yeltsin with his economic shock therapy, fully rebuilt the bureaucracy. One opened the system. The other tried to replace it entirely. The middle layer of the State quietly stayed the same, like an old machine given a new coat of paint and sent back out. Different country, different flag, different history. But the pattern feels familiar.
Leadership without administrative change
President Dissanayake is trying to steer Sri Lanka through economic corrections and external pressures. The quieter question remains whether the deeper public service machinery is being touched at all. Because the risk, in the end, is simple and slightly ironic. A leader may be popular in speeches, strong in numbers, and admired abroad. But, if the bureaucracy continues to move at its own familiar pace, change becomes something announced loudly and delivered slowly. Or, as politics often reminds us, sometimes the country changes its leader faster than the system changes its habits.
The election manifesto, A Thriving Nation – A Beautiful Life, lists specific commitments: depoliticising the public service, professionalising the bureaucracy, ending corruption and the misuse of State resources, digitalising Government services, and rebuilding trust between citizens and the State. Start with the very first one. Depoliticising the public service. Then look at what is happening now, who is being targeted over the so-called United States Dollars 2.5 million easy money to hackers claim, and who occupies the chair of the Finance, Planning and Economic Development Ministry Secretary. The distance between that promise and this moment is not a gap. It is a full paragraph.
The NPP may need to sit quietly with one idea: start where you are, not where you wish you were. If that is genuinely understood, there may still be a meaningful May Day moment ahead, one that is not only about political memory, but about restoring the credibility of a system that actually begins to change itself. That, too, would be a kind of revolution. A quieter one, without banners or caricatures. But perhaps the kind that lasts.
The writer is a researcher, elections analyst and civil society advocate specialising in democratic reform and electoral processes. He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Democratic Reforms and Electoral Studies
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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication