Why the Sandinistas Failed – Lessons for Sri Lanka’s NPP from Nicaragua
By Political Correspondent
When Sri Lanka elected a government led by the National People’s Power (NPP)—rooted in the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)—it marked one of the most remarkable ideological evolutions in post-colonial politics. A movement that was violently crushed in the late 1980s, driven underground and nearly erased, has re-emerged not as an insurrectionary force but as a moderate, institutional, and reform-oriented governing coalition.
This trajectory stands in sharp contrast to the fate of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua—a revolutionary movement that captured state power, monopolised economic and political life, and eventually collapsed into authoritarianism.
The comparison is instructive, not because Sri Lanka risks repeating Nicaragua’s tragedy, but because the NPP has consciously chosen a path the Sandinistas refused to take.
Two Lefts Born in Fire
Both movements were forged under repression.
The Sandinistas emerged in the 1960s as an armed response to the Somoza dynasty, a US-backed family dictatorship that ruled Nicaragua for over four decades. The JVP, similarly, arose from structural exclusion, youth unemployment, and elite dominance in Sri Lanka, culminating in the brutal counter-insurgency of 1987–1990 that decimated an entire generation.
Yet survival alone does not determine political destiny. What matters is how movements reinterpret their past when the gun is replaced by the ballot.
The Sandinista Error: State as Substitute for Society
After overthrowing Somoza in 1979, the Sandinistas inherited a shattered economy and weak institutions. Rather than decentralising power, they consolidated it.
Economic policy became state-centric and ideologically rigid. The private sector was tolerated only when politically compliant. Capital markets were distrusted. Entrepreneurship was subordinated to party loyalty. The result was not equality, but stagnation.
Political pluralism fared no better. Elections were held, but opposition participation was constrained. Civil society was gradually absorbed into party structures. Over time, the state became indistinguishable from the ruling party.
When external pressure intensified—through US sanctions and proxy warfare—the Sandinistas responded not by broadening democratic legitimacy but by narrowing it. Authority replaced consent.
NPP’s Structural Break with Revolutionary Orthodoxy
Sri Lanka’s NPP represents a fundamentally different leftist experiment.
The modern NPP has explicitly abandoned economic autarky and ideological hostility to markets. Its programme accepts:
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Open market participation, regulated rather than suppressed
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Digitalisation of public services to reduce rent-seeking and bureaucratic opacity
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Capital market development to mobilise domestic and diaspora investment
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Public-private partnerships (PPPs) as tools for infrastructure, logistics, and energy
This is not cosmetic moderation. It is a recognition that state capacity in the 21st century depends on cooperation, not command.
Unlike the Sandinistas, the NPP does not treat the private sector as an ideological enemy but as a stakeholder—subject to regulation, taxation, and accountability, not political loyalty.
Collectiveness Versus Command
Perhaps the most critical distinction lies in governance culture.
Sandinista leadership evolved into personalised rule, culminating in Daniel Ortega’s family-centred authoritarianism. Collective leadership structures eroded. Dissent became betrayal.
The NPP, by contrast, has emphasised collective decision-making, institutional checks, and professional expertise. Power is framed as a mandate to reform systems, not to dominate them.
This difference is not accidental. The JVP’s near-annihilation in the 1980s instilled a deep institutional memory: centralised power invites catastrophic backlash.
Markets Without Oligarchy
The Sandinistas failed to distinguish between capitalism as exploitation and markets as coordination mechanisms. The result was a black-and-white worldview ill-suited to economic complexity.
The NPP’s challenge is different: preventing open markets from degenerating into oligarchic capture, as happened under previous Sri Lankan governments. Here, digital governance, transparent procurement, and independent regulators become political tools—not technocratic luxuries.
This is where Nicaragua offers its sharpest warning: state control without transparency breeds elite capture just as surely as laissez-faire corruption does.
Why Nicaragua Matters to Sri Lanka
The Sandinistas did not fail because they were leftist. They failed because they:
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confused revolutionary legitimacy with permanent authority
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replaced pluralism with party loyalty
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treated the economy as a battlefield rather than an ecosystem
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personalised power in the name of stability
Sri Lanka’s NPP, at least in doctrine, has rejected each of these traps.
A Test, Not a Verdict
The NPP’s victory is not the end of a struggle but the beginning of a far more difficult phase: governing without becoming the state; reforming markets without surrendering to them; wielding power without mistaking it for virtue.
Nicaragua shows what happens when a revolutionary movement stops listening. Sri Lanka now has the opportunity to demonstrate what happens when a formerly radical left learns, adapts, and governs without fear of society.
History will judge whether the NPP merely survived repression—or truly transcended it.