Extending their bureaucratic policy of “purge”, the leadership of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), Sri Lanka has announced the expulsion of 07 more members from the Party. The respective members have been informed through a letter that states that the Central Committee which met on August, 2 2023 has taken the decision for the expulsions, due to their “continued indiscipline, while repudiating the recommendations of the Political Committee.”
The Political Committee of the Party is claiming that the members have violated the PC recommendation to abstain from continuing any relations with Sanjaya Jayasekara and Nandana Nanneththi who had been Expelled from the party earlier; and to refrain from supporting the Colombo Action Committee (CAC) – the Colombo based action committee which unanimously adopted the July 20, 2022 resolution of the SEP, during its inauguration meeting held on September 11, 2022. Sanjaya was expelled for publicly representing the revolutionary perspective of the SEP in ‘Gota-go-gama’ (Galle face Greens protest site) during the mass uprising last year, and for establishing CAC and sharing its facebook posts. Nandana was subjected to a systematic and provocative mudslinging campaign amongst members of the party on various bogus charges. When the repeated requests for a discussion was denied and Nandana started responding through his facebook page (while his membership was under suspension, depriving him to defend himself in branch meetings), he was charged with violating the party discipline. Their responses to the charges levelled against them were never taken up for discussion among the members, nor any disciplinary inquiry was ever held. The party leadership has not explained to the membership the political reasons for the expulsion of these two leading members, except for publishing three documents in Sinhalese, which are full of nothing but subjective allegations without political substance, demonstrative of its nationalist orientation on the issues. The party leadership has also, so far, failed to give any political reason as to why they are hostile to the CAC.
Following are the seven party members victimized on the latest round:
Ivan, Kandy Local –A retired government clerk, a member of Kandy Committee since 1972;
Nihal Geekiyanage, Chilaw Local – a member since July 1980 and former Central Committee member;
Ratne alias Punyawardena, Chilaw Local – worker in fisheries sector, a member since 1990;
Wijesinghe, Chilaw Local – health sector employee, a member since 2008;
Karunasena, Rathmalana Local – Factory level Union activist in early 1980s, who actively participated in forming an action committee under the guidance of Revolutionary Communist League (RCL) during the Rowlands Factory strike – a member since 1982;
Udayaprema, Ambalangoda Local – Cartoonist, a member since 1988 and former Central Committee member;
Geetha, Ambalangoda Local – a member since 1990, a full-time party activist in ’90s, campaigning among workers in the Free Trade Zone, Katunayake.
Under circumstances in which nothing was politically explained, never given any opportunity to have a discussion to clarify issues, and contravening the party constitution by not allowing them to prove their innocence at a disciplinary enquiry, these comrades took a principled stance in refusing to submit to these edicts presented in a dictatorial manner.
The SEP’s third national congress, held from May 14-16, 2022, was a congress almost exclusively prepared to carry out these expulsions, and directed through covert machinations. Earlier It was attempted to be held in March 2022, giving only a few days’ notice to the members, such that the membership would have no chance to prepare for the congress. The purpose of this plan was to avoid all discussion about the political, theoretical and organizational retreats of the party and anti-democratic tendency taking shape in the party. However, following the intervention of the International Committee (ICFI) upon being informed of this attempt by the members of the left faction of the party, the effort was defeated.
Although the purpose of postponement was to allow necessary time for pre-Congress discussions, the actual mannar the things took place was disgraceful. The documents forwarded by members for the pre-Congress discussions were not distributed among the membership. Even in the limited cases where some discussions were held, the party regime acted to suppress the opposing views and eliminated every possibility of a deep going discussion on the issues. The Congress was held online due to the COVID-19 epidemic situation and the regime used the situation to its advantage even to the extent of rigging the vote. Some members were denied the right to vote. Members who fought for principles were forced to leave the party or to become inactive. For example, comrade William of the Bulathsinhala Local, who is a long-time member of the party, was assigned to the Bandarawela Local, a locality more than 100 miles away from his home or work place. Comrade William had no connection with this area and there was no reason what-so-ever for this decision, which was taken purely at the discretion of the leadership. Considering the extensive travel time under the prevailing poor transport facilities and costs in Sri Lanka, this decision – which added to the party leadership’s ban on so-called ‘cross-connections’ (banning the members of different locals discussing with each other) – was nothing but forcing him to be inactive in party politics. The only logical reason one can derive on this decision is that it was because he dared to question the leadership based on his long experience in the party. Principled members who opposed the regime’s anti-Bolshevik actions were removed from the leadership and replaced by backward and economically well-to-do petty-bourgeois individuals, such as businessmen.
Two members, who were very much frustrated by these events, left the party ranks within two weeks following the Congress. They claimed that, as their all efforts to clarify the situation were not allowed, they would have no further relationship with the party. They had submitted written statements to Vilani Peiris who was the secretary of the Colombo Fort Local and to the Political Committee, with supporting evidence on the issues they raised. One of these two members wasMissaka, who was a member of the Central Committee until the Third Congress.
When the Ambalangoda Local Committee met for the first time after the Congress, the local secretary and political committee member, Ratnasiri Malalagama acted in contravention of the long-standing tradition of conducting a political discussion and assessment of the Congress. When Nandana Nanneththi opposed this practice and requested a review discussion about the Congress, the newly appointed General Secretary, Deepal Jayasekara decided to ban Nandana Nanneththi’s membership. Comrade Amartunga, a member of Ambalangoda Local and an active member since 1976 – a mining worker who joined the party having fought against the bureaucratic witch-hunt by trade union leaderships – was de facto expelled for his opposing views on the expulsion of comrade Nandana.
On November 19, 2022, comrades Nandana and Sanjaya were permanently expelled from the party membership. Afterwards, comrade Migara of the Kolonnawa local committee was expelled for opposing this move. Comrade Sunil of Ratmalana Committee, who had been with the party since the ’70s, too had to face the similar fate. Thus, within a period of little more than one year after the Congress, the regime led by the new General Secretary, Jayasekara has ‘purged’ (the word historically closely associated with bureaucracies, is often used by SEP leadership to mean to administratively suppress dissenting views) twelve members from the Party. Thereby, the party leadership may justly lay claim to a special infamous record in the history of the Fourth International! The list of defectors runs longer than that. More members, although not having expressed any opposing view prior to or during the Congress have left since the third Congress, proffering various reasons for leaving; or, there are others who ran away without as much as a word. Among those who left after the 2022 Congress are Dhanapala (a member since the early days of RCL) and Niluka from the Kandy Local, Mahesh from Chilaw Local, and Sathish Kumar from Ratmalana Local. Several Dozen left the party between the last two Congresses. The Avissawella local committee was disbanded. The irresponsible response from the leadership to those who questioned this serious erosion and its political implications was, “they come and they go… there is nothing to discuss about it”.
Significantly, the Party has also lost another Political Committee Member, Prageeth Aravinda, who decided to leave the party, yearly this year. Aravinda was re-appointed to the Central Committee at the Third Congress, and was a member of the Sri Lanka Editorial Board of WSWS. He was employed by the unclean hands of the party bureaucracy to destroy the Action Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Art and Expression (ACDAE), which had been operating successfully. When the pertinent issues were raised in the open letters addressed to him by Comrade Nandana on November 19, 2022, and by the committee’s former Chairperson, Comrade Sanjaya on January 30, 2023, he ran away failing to answer them.
Ananda Wakkumbura, a founding member of the SEP, as well as a leading founding member of its predecessor, the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), had to spend several months under suspension of membership, due to his intervention, with the ICFI Perspective, in the last year’s mass uprising at the Gota-go-gama protest site. Bowing down to the bogus allegations, he was lately able to regain his membership, but is being treated as an invalid coin in the organization, which he devoted his entire life to build. The regime is demanding the Left faction to follow his example.
Generally, a congress is an opportunity, which provides space for a party’s issues to be debated, clarified and finally resolved, thus laying the groundwork for the party to begin work with a renewed vigor as a theoretically, politically and organizationally stronger, unified organization. Although the party developed and published a Perspective under the supervision of the International Committee, the leadership has only treated it as just another formal ‘document’. The Congress concentrated on taking the focus away from its Perspectives through slander and mudslinging. This example alone is sufficient to understand that the party regime pays only lip service to the perspectives, while adopting pragmatism in practice.
In contrast, Comrade David North, Chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), at the beginning of the third Congress, brought ICFI’s greetings for the Congress and assessed it as follows:
“In the present circumstances, the Congress is not an occasion merely for commenting on the events happening outside of it. The party leadership, every delegate, must clearly understand, as I am sure you do, that all the discussions are invested with an immense and immediate political and historical content. Therefore, the fundamental challenge that this Congress confronts is to clearly define the attitude of the Sri Lankan section of the IC to the immense and decisive global events, and, of course, to the developing revolutionary crisis within Sri Lanka. In this sense, the Congress that you are holding has many similarities to the Congress of the Bolshevik Party in April 1917, the first Congress held following the return of Lenin to Russia amid a revolutionary crisis.”
The party regime treated this objective historical assessment as a laurel conferred upon it, and a license from comrade North to do as it pleased for holding a congress similar to the one held by Lenin! Indeed, North’s emphasis was on the historical responsibilities of the party. It was an emphasis on politically preparing to confront the developing world war situation and on the challenge of facing the growing revolutionary crisis in the country itself. Despite this insistence, the regime turned its back on the revolutionary crisis as it escalated and, conspired against and ousted the members who resisted the evasion. The meaning of alienating itself from the genuine mass movement of April-August 2022, the rejection of genuine action committees such as the CAC and maintaining the position that true action committees are only those approved by the party, is that the bureaucracy wants mass struggles to seek its approval, and suppressed, as, being politically and organizationally unprepared, it is unable to face the challenge posed by unprecedented mass struggles. According to the bureaucracy, the independent Action Committees are to be dictated by the programmes of the International Committee and are not viewed as instruments of mobilizing mass movement.
We assure the working class that the SEP-SL Left Faction, which opposes this anti-Marxist tendency within the party, cannot be silenced and numbed by expulsions and all kinds of witch-hunts. Members of the Left Faction will fight to protect and safeguard the ICFI programme and its best traditions and, in that regard, will not hesitate to stake their lives. It will fight any attempt by the Party to derail the Party from those policies. We reject the SEP regime’s claim that the CAC is Identical to the Left Faction and it hides behind it. The Left Faction does not seek shelter in CAC and fights within the working class with a revolutionary perspective. We have successfully fought for the ICFI perspective within the CAC to adopt it and, we carry forward this struggle more intensively within the working class. We, the Left faction, are determined to break all bureaucratic barriers placed between us and the ICFI and fight for the unity of the working class and for the perspective of World Socialist Revolution under the banner of ICFI.
[A statement with the similar content was published in Sinhala here on August 07, 2023]
Members of the Families of Kotiagala plantation workers watching Layattu Koligal drama
“Layattu Koligal” is a drama embodying the lives and struggle of estate workers, and is meant to be played either on the street or on the stage. Despite threats from the army, police, estate management and union leaders, it premiered on July 9 at Kotiyagala estate, Bogawantalawa. Later it was staged on July 16 and 18 at Kernerswold Middle Section and Champion Upper Section Estates subsequently, and will be staged in various parts of the island in the coming days.
Scenes from Layaththu Koligal
The troupe faced a number of obstacles. An officer from the military unit in charge of the area, having been informed by his intelligence unit of the plan to stage the drama, contacted the director over the phone and warned him not to stage any event without first informing the military unit. Then, a union leader threatened that he cannot allow staging the drama, as it may create troubles for him.
Drama director Loganandan, explaining the difficult situation he faced, writes in a facebook post titled, “My life made sense on July 9”, as follows:
“On this day, I staged a drama in my own estate where I was born and brought up. The upper Section of Kotiyagala is my estate. Bogawantalawa is our nearest town. Theatre is my life. The roots that directed me in this direction was my Kotiyagala estate
“Our drama, started in a very simple way, eventually gained popularity with a social upheaval amid huge controversies. “Layattu Koligal” has become a historical event.
“This note… is regarding the courage of our people. That miracle happened when the commitment and hopes of our drama team were shattered. My dear brother Danas was able to handle the very people who harshly threatened us not to stage the drama, in a very simple manner. It is remarkable that he is the son of the former protester, uncle Mariasusei in our estate. I was touched by the self-respect displayed by the efforts of my dear brothers Prakash and Vimalkanth who stood shoulder to shoulder with me on this occasion. Their actions should be an example to many. My phone still assures me that Adambankodi (a strong twined vine used by workers for tying firewood together and for similar purposes) is waving from now on. There are signs of an intellectual change in the future. I am inspired by being able to stage the drama disregarding those who said that it would not be allowed to be played.
“How many people have hugged and embraced me after the play? Their eyes were overflowing with happiness. The joy that was shining on the faces of the children! It is indescribable. We have to do drama for them. Our journey will continue. We will roar as a great multitude.”
Director S. Loganandan enjoying warm audience response
Even if we consider only the ambience that was described above, Layattu Koligal is a symbol of a struggle that inevitably demands for a historical change. The extraordinary form of the drama also arises from such a social requirement.
It is a story about a chicken theft. Murugan Andy (M. Ajanthan) and Andy Murugan (A. Navaneethan) are two chicken thieves. They both are competing with each other in stealing. Fowls are being stolen all over the area and people are fighting to protect their chicken from thieves. This fight is portrayed by the trio of a poor woman (S. Seedevi), her young son (S. Vasikaran) and another woman (Kalai Durasi) assisting them. Escalating the conflict between the thieves and the woman in the play, the poor woman entrusts the care of her fowl to her teenage son. The thieves try to trick him and steal the bird by giving him toys, and when they fail in this attempt, they finally threaten him with a firearm and forcibly take the chicken. A magician (S. Leelawathi), dressed in a garb that brings to mind Yankee imperialism, becomes the arbiter of the thieves’ struggle for the possession of the chicken, pulls currency notes from the chicken’s belly and pockets the notes herself. A few coins are thrown on the ground for thieves to pick up. The thieves get greedy and the magician hands them two torches and takes the chicken away.
Chicken Thieves (M. Navaneethan and M. Ajanthan)
Then the poor woman declares, with a heavy heart, “we are looking for a chicken throughout our entire lives. But what have we really lost? What we really lost is our own lives,”. It appears that the working class, including herself, who have nothing to lose but their own lives, have no choice but to fight. “We have lost our lives,” a worker on the Kerkerswald estate repeated before us, after watching the play. These very words will echo among plantation workers.
Women Estate Workers, S. Seedevi and S. Kalei Arasi
Drama Director Logananthan has identified the dramatic moments of his play, such as the attempt of the two thieves to steal the same chicken, trying to deceive each other in the act, the way the woman intervenes each time to disrupt their attempt, repetition of this sequence, the competition between the thieves after the woman entrusts the protection of the chicken to her teenage son, and the manifestation of the magician and her investigation of the thieves’ complaint on the ownership of the chicken. This proves his creativity, and he has also managed to keep the audience engaged with the play from the beginning to the conclusion of it.
The theatre style of the two main actors portraying the roles of the two thieves generates humor and opposition in the audience towards those characters. For them, it recreates the vile ruling class tendencies they confront in their day-to-day lives, nurturing from their flesh, blood and sweat, which includes the trade unions. Adopting Tamil Kuththu drama tradition for the costumes, make-up, gait, etc., the director, Loganandan makes the worker-audience see the characters away from their own lives as distant spectators. Also, it is notable that the costumes and performance of the magician, who takes possession of the property taken from the workers and gives a pittance to the thieves, is created to remind one of Western imperialism. Workers’ characters are created in a form somewhat closer to the realistic tradition, but somewhere in between the realistic and stylistic theatre styles, thereby giving the audience an opportunity to see themselves.
Magician, S. Leelawathi
One feels that, apart from providing energy and rhythm to the act, the spectator also is directed towards the relationships repeatedly reflecting the estate workers’ surroundings and their lives, by creatively using the rhythms from membranophones familiar in the estate life, such as Thappu (Parai – a frame drum popular in estate workers) music used in Kuththu dramas. Thappu was used two hundred years ago, during the difficult journey of South Indian workers over the sea and then to the central mountains through forests, to ward off dangerous animals and for protection from them.
The thieves represent the trade unions and various right-wing, pseudo-left fronts, covering up the role of capitalist social order, and in revealing this relationship, the drama challenges this social order. As the lives deprived to the estate workers by this social order cannot be reclaimed under capitalism, it highlights the urgent need of the working class to take matters into their own hands in determining their own destiny. For this reason, Layattu Koligal can be regarded as a realistic work of art, which ignites the life aspirations of oppressed people.
Since the emotions conveyed by the play from the beginning to the end are of a class nature, and it evokes the moods of the working class, it is a creation that represents the historical need of the current stage of social development, and it is worth considering what social conditions awakened the composer for his creation.
The artist’s statement that we have already quoted will surely provide a sufficient answer. Commemorative notes are being written on the two hundred years of plantation workers’ lives in Sri Lanka. The anniversaries make the workers re-think about themselves. During the period of nearly four years that have passed since the COVID pandemic, the crisis of the class society is getting protracted and coming to the fore in a way that cannot be suppressed. Parallel to the anniversary, this crisis provokes sentiments among the estate workers.
A school-aged plantation girl named Ishalini of Diagama, Hatton, who had been employed as a domestic worker, committed suicide by setting fire to herself in July 2021. During our discussions with the estate workers, it was clear to us that the very flames that took Ishalini’s life are still burning within the hearts of workers. Ishalini is a symbol of fate in plantation lives. The Tamil people in the plantations, who are barely getting the basic needs like education, jobs and housing fulfilled, now have to face the problems of protecting their children from all evils including drugs. The divisions created by trade unions and capitalist politics and the suppression of the struggles of the working people by these movements are being questioned. Meanwhile, the unstable capitalist governments are determined to unleash the offencive, without allowing them any democratic rights. When the brutal collapse of living conditions could not be tolerated any more, the estate youth came forward for the first time, in a campaign that their parents should receive a salary of at least one thousand rupees per day. The trade unions betrayed that struggle. The genuine artist born in the plantation and brought up in the plantation environment cannot ignore these.
Layattu Koligal. S. Seedevi and S. Vasikaran
Veteran actress S. Leelawathie, who is a member of a family of plantation workers, in successfully recreating this bitter truth, colors the climax of the play by her short, but brilliant performance in playing the role of the magician, who represents the evil and tyrannical ruling class. In particular, she not only proved that she is an actress who has mastered the art of acting, but also that she understood and conceptually recreated the social need expressed in the play. Therefore, her performance stands out. There is no doubt that S. Siddevi’s acting skills will remain in the memory of the audience. M. Ajanthan and M. Navaneedan who acted as thieves are showing clearly that they have the potential to achieve the skills of Leelawathie, and by mastering the craft and understanding of the social situations of the characters, they will be able to illuminate the drama even more than it presently does. We can expect that the apprentice teenager S. Vaseekaran will extend the skills he has shown in delivering the dialogues, to the other areas of play acting as well.
Navaneedan’s set design is excellent. By creating the chicken, the chicken coop and toys, especially the firearm, in a way that is clearly seen as a toy, he contributes to a powerful emphasis on the theme of the play.
A recent step taken by the ruling class to curb such creations is the arrest of stand-up comedian Nathasha Edrisooriya for an art creation. Sirima Bandaranaike’s coalition government that came to power in 1970 launched a strong attack on arts. There are many artists who have been persecuted since then. Several years ago, the education authorities have acted to prevent students from creating plays that discuss social issues by banning the play “Velicham Veliye Illai” produced by the students and teachers of St Mary’s College, Bogawantalawa even after it was selected to the final round in the National School Drama Competition. Accordingly, only the old traditional art work and their new interpretations are permitted for students, and they also restrict that the traditional written language should be used in their artistic work. Now, according to the instructions given to the judges of drama competitions, the subject range of artistic creations has been subjected to various restrictions such as ‘no politics’, ‘no insults to religion’, etc.
Similarly, governments around the world do not tolerate freedom of art and expression. Only the artist who understands that art must be freed from capitalism for the sake of the freedom of art, can enter the struggle to protect the freedom of art and expression. An ‘art’ out of touch with social reality does not in any way serve the advancement of an advanced culture. So, the only force that is capable of taking the initiative in defending the real art, which recognises the utility of social progress, is the working class which defeated the movement against Layattu Koligal. Accordingly, being organised in Rank-and-File Workers’ action committees and building a people’s revolutionary movement, extending the hand of camaraderie across all divisions and boundaries are the foremost social responsibilities of today’s artist. As Loganandan notes, “We roar in great multitudes!”
[This article was originally published in Sinhalese here on July 20, 2023]
Yesterday (21) one journalist stood alone in expressing his protest against Australian government and took it opportunity to demand that government’s intervention to secure the release of the witch-hunted journalist Julian Assange, when the Australian High Commissioner (HC) to Sri Lanka, Paul Stephens, was delivering a speech at an event held in the Central Bank (CB) building.
The event was a certificate awarding ceremony to about two and a half a dozen journalists who had followed a macroeconomics course conducted by the CB in association with the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI). Several journalists had been sponsored by ‘Australian Aid’, while others had paid for themselves. At the event, CB governor, Nandalal Weerasinghe and SLPI Chairperson, Kumar Nadeshan were sharing the head-table together with the HC.
The Governor’s speech was followed by Stephen’s. During the HC’s whole speech for about eight minutes, Journalist Sanjaya Jayasekera, raised a placard to show, “Free Julian Assange – the Journalist of the People!”.
Jayasekera raising the placard, “Free Julian Assange!” [Photo by Shabeer Mohamed]
Following the event, Jayasekera spoke to thesocialist.LK. He is the editor of theRepublic.LK, and a writer for theSocialist.LK. He was a writer for the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), and a member of its Sri Lankan editorial panel. Presently, he is also the Chairperson of the Colombo Action Committee.
Jayasekera stated as follows:
“The Australian government is responsible for the life of the journalist Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblower website, the WikiLeaks. Assange is an Australian citizen. He has been deprived of his personal life for 14 years now, incarcerated in prison cells under extreme conditions, just for exposing the blood-soaked war crimes of the United States military and the government in Iraq and Afghanistan. This award-winning journalist is a hero of the people, as his exposure was based on his belief that the people should know the truth, as their monies are squandered without their consent for waging imperialist wars abroad, and for killing men, women and children.
“The Biden administration is seeking Assange’s extradition to the US where he will face charges of espionage that carry a life sentence and even death penalty. His only “crime” is the publication of classified documents and footage exposing the war crimes and diplomatic conspiracies of US imperialism and its allies. Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence officer, who provided these videos to Wikileaks was also kept in detention and harassed.
“After he was forcefully arrested and dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London in April 2019, Assange has been confined to UK Belmarsh prison. The Australian government has been complicit in the continued persecution, personal slander, conspiracy and spying against him by US imperialism. US used Sweden to level fabricated allegations of sexual assault against Assange, which were later dropped. Established media are part of these sins.
Assange in Police custody outside Westminster Magistrates Court after his arrest [sky.com]
“Assange’s persecution is intended to terrorize all journalists and whistleblowers, anywhere in the world, by all governments.
“For more than three decades US has been waging continuous imperialist wars abroad to offset its declining global economic dominance and is now engaged in a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, with the full support of NATO and its allies including Australia. Severe austerity is implemented to place the burden of the war on the working class domestically. The war is drawing the world toward the danger of a nuclear catastrophe. This war is just a prelude to a greater war against US’s main rival, China.
“These wars have to be stopped to save humanity. That requires the building of a united global anti-war movement. Journalists have their own social responsibility in this regard. Assange is undoubtedly their role model,” Jayasekera said.
“I believe the highest task of a genuine journalist is to search for, analyze and expose the truth- the truth about the society and the world around. He should be faithful to the truth. To know the truth, he should have a thorough understanding of the mechanisms of society, and always be biased towards people and social justice. That is true journalism.”
Jayasekera also said the defence of Assange is a litmus test of those who claim to represent democratic rights.
Late March this year, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong effectively declared in the Senate that the Labor government of prime minister Anthony Albanese could do nothing to secure Assange’s freedom, due to “legal processes” in another country, contrary to its fraudulent claims of using “quiet diplomacy” to address his dire plight. These assertions contradict its own precedent practices.
Assange’s freedom is not secured by imperialist allies like Australia. “The war serves their class interests. Saving the life of Assange and freedom of journalism, as well as halting the war are matters that rest solely on the hands of the working people”, Jayasekera stated further.
It is the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the WSWS that have systematically exposed the persecution of Assange, US imperialism’s preparations for world war and called for the building of an international anti-war movement of the working class.
Free Julian Assange Now! Build the International Anti-war Movement!
As part of a larger onslaught on democratic rights, Sri Lanka government of President Ranil Wickremasinghe is waging a war against free expression of the masses, specifically targeting print and digital media and online platforms. The latest of this attack is prepared by another piece of proposed legislation to reinvigorate the archaic legal mechanism of contempt of court law, long used by governments around the world to witch-hunt political opponents and stifle dissent and criticism.
The proposed law titled, “Contempt of Court, Tribunal and Institution Bill,” was published in the government gazette on June 27, on the order of the Minister of Justice, Prison Affairs and Constitutional Reforms, Wijedasa Rajapaksha. On the same date last year, cabinet of then prime minister Wickremasinghe approved the proposal to codify the law to specify the offences, the punishments for the same and to provide for the procedure in punishing for contempt.
The bill proposes its objectives to be to:
uphold the “dignity” and authority of a court, tribunal and institution,
protect the due administration of justice,
safeguard public order, public health and morals,
strike a balance between the right of expression, “fair comment” and compliance with judicial directives;
set out with precision the ambit of contempt of a court.
It provides that a person who commits an act or omission with intent to (a) bring the authority of a court, tribunal and institution and administration of justice into disrespect or disregard; or (b) interfere with, or cause prejudice to the judicial process in relation to any ongoing litigation, commits the offence of contempt of a court.
Further, as per Section 3(c) of the Bill, expressing, pronouncing or publishing any matter that is “not substantially true” which, or doing any other act which, (i) “scandalizes” or lowers the judicial authority or dignity of a court, tribunal or institution; (ii) prejudices, or interferes with, the due course of any judicial proceeding; or (iii) interferes with, or obstructs the administration of justice, commits contempt.
According to Section 3(e) thereof, “scandalizing a court, tribunal or institution, or a judge or judicial officer with intent to (i) interfere with the due administration of justice; (ii) excite dissatisfaction in the minds of the public in regard to a court, tribunal or institution; or (iii) cast public suspicion on the administration of justice is an offence. (Emphasis added)
However, it is given that any publication or expression (a) of “true and accurate facts” of any case or proceedings before a court, tribunal or institution made without malice or intention to impair the administration of justice; or (b) of “fair comments” on merits of any action or application which has been heard and decided, shall not be deemed to be contempt.
None of the words and phrases, ‘dignity’, ‘fair comment’, ‘disrespect’, ‘causing prejudice to the judicial process’, ‘scandalizing’ have been defined in the bill and therefore would imply a broader scope covering any kind of speech or activity. The contempt proceedings could also be brought against a person in order to safeguard public order, health and morals, and against publication of something “not substantially true”. How to ‘strike a balance’ between ‘fair comment’ and ‘compliance’ once again would depend on the discretion of a judge. These terms would be easily interpreted against any dissent.
Again, the judges themselves will find any free expression of opinion to amount to acts of contempt of court to excite dissatisfaction in the minds of the public in regard to a court, or to cast public suspicion on the administration of justice.
The bill encodes the associated reactionary law of sub judice, which is often used to ban or restrict any expression or discussion on an ongoing case, which could happen to be of larger public interest.
After all, fundamentally, judges themselves deciding upon contempt of itself is a clear conflict of interest situation, and violates the rule that no one should hear his own case.
Sri Lanka’s authoritarian constitution itself recognizes that fundamental rights, specifically the right to freedom of expression, could be restricted on the basis of contempt of court. It empowers the highest courts of the country, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal to punish as it wishes for contempt taken place before or outside itself or a lower court.
Under the Penal Code of Sri Lanka, the colonial legislation that codifies principal criminal offences, “whoever by words, either spoken or intended to be read, excites or attempts to excite hatred or contempt of the administration of justice” commits the offences of contempt.
Prosecutions for the aforesaid offences under the new law could be readily instituted against anybody by anyone, who could be the police, a government official or possibly any racist and religious group or individual who constitute far-right political forces hell-bent on crushing fighters against backward and reactionary social structures.
The Supreme Court or the Court of Appeal can order detention of the person charged for contempt under the Act against themselves or a lower court, or grant bail. It is a well known fact that defending a respondent in the apex courts of the island is not affordable to many and this could mean deprivation of a strong defence and longer terms in detention.
A person found guilty of contempt of court could be imposed a fine upto rupees half a million or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year, or both. On a second or subsequent conviction these thresholds would be doubled.
While the government of Sri Lanka wants to strengthen this draconian law, entrenching these constitutional restrictions, the common law jurisprudence, however limited, has affirmed that freedom of expression should not be restricted by matters of contempt, as it cuts across the standards of modern democracy, and as judicial authority is not undermined by public criticism. In the United Kingdom, there is almost no conviction to be found for scandalizing since the John Colsey case in 1931. Lord Diplock, in 1985, in Secretary of State for Defence v. Guardian Newspapers Ltd., considered the offence to be ‘virtually obsolescent’. In the United States, UK and Canada, the offence of criticizing judges and courts has been effectively a dead letter.
During the past two decades, Sri Lanka has developed a practice of increasingly using this law to prosecute and incarcerate political opponents. In mid 2018, the Supreme Court convicted Ranjan Ramanayaka, whistleblower, popular actor and then a member of parliament from the United National Party (UNP), to rigorous imprisonment for an unprecedented term of four years, for contempt, in openly asserting a public perception that “Majority in Sri Lanka are corrupted judges, corrupted lawyers. They work for money.” The judgment of the court easily avoided referring to rich jurisprudence that discourages the use of contempt law to suppress criticism of the judiciary.
In India, where contempt law is enacted, it has often been used to suppress dissent. The controversy surrounding its application to suppress expression came to limelight when, in 2020, the Supreme Court found famous activist advocate Prashant Bhushan guilty of contempt for tweeting to mean that the Indian supreme court and its past four chief justices were contributing to the destruction of the country’s democracy.
Wijedasa’s proposed legislation is intended to make this anti-democratic law a part of the country’s statute book and give otherwise a discouraged and discredited law a new lease of life, making it easily accessible to reactionary forces in the assistance of the ruling class to suppress political opposition from the media, activists, youth and the working people.
These reforms are the demand of the ruling class, not of the people. It is true to say that to enact is to always restrict some right. Whatever the ruling class may give from one hand, is taken from the other. The laws are shown to be placed to defend the good ones against bad ones, but, in fact these are rules guarding one class against the other.
However, liberal circles, think tanks and a section of the upper middle class of Colombo have quite some time been lobbying for codification of a contempt of court law. The Law Commission of Sri Lanka even proposed a draft bill in 2008. The observable silence of these groups in respect of the current bill shows their tacit approval of the law. Shown as the ultimate guardian of ‘justice’, the court’s ‘independence’ is regarded by them in high esteem, and they want it to be immune from public criticism.
Recently, a number of similar anti-democratic law reforms were temporarily retracted or receded to the backdrop amidst larger public opposition. One of such was the law proposed to institute a broadcasting regulatory commission to regulate media licensing and introduce a number of media related offences to intimidate and punish journalists and media institutions. Earlier, a harsher law was proposed to replace the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act, which has been widely used against ethnic minorities.
During and following the last year mass protests, a number of times the government used court orders to block mass protests, attack protesters with batton charges, water cannon and tear gas, and arrest and prosecute them. The public perception of the justice system including courts is nothing but its own make. The more the class antagonisms deepens, the more precarious the crisis grows, and “all that is solid melts into air”and “all that is holy is profaned”.
Court is an instrument of class rule. In respect of matters relating to people at large, no court is independent from its bias towards the ruling class. Its unquestioned authority is therefore a critical element in securing the exploitative profit system, the capitalist property relations. Expressions that can spark and direct class struggles against social inequality, when directed against the authority of this class instrument, should therefore be suppressed. Principles of sub judice and contempt of court originate from this class necessity.
History testifies that governments, anywhere in the world, want people to believe a facade that their actions are democratically legitimate. Every dictatorship, even with all its machinery to arrest, detain, imprison and kill political opponents and working class leaders, still endeavors to make all repressive measures legal, having necessary laws passed by its legislatures, to attempt to preempt class struggles. However, the more the crisis deepens, whether they have these laws in their arsenal or not, they stop at nothing to halt the working class marching toward their barracks.
Wickremasinghe government is well aware that it is sitting on a social powder-keg. It is aware that aborting the people’s right to elections, blaming the economic crisis, carries far reaching consequences in the public perception of the government, in spite of all its subsequent false claims of economic recovery. Wickremasinghe is planning to hold a presidential election prior to another social uprising that could dwarf last year’s popular struggles, in view of the severe austerity measures implemented at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which demands a strong authoritative regime to pay debts and impose its burden upon the working class.
Such mass struggles are not only a matter of time, but most critically, a matter of leadership. An independent revolutionary leadership of the working class has to be built. In view of the fact that all bourgeois nationalist alternatives have rotten to the core, including the so-called petty bourgeois political movements, the space for fascistic elements to gather a momentum within disillusioned sections of the middle class is an acute danger. Unless the working class takes command of the deep-rooted social anger to direct progressive social forces against the ruling class, social counter-revolution will take rather bloodier forms. This prospect should be defeated.
The essential first step in this perspective is for the working class to take matters of their lives into their own hands. Laws for the toiling masses have to be determined democratically by them through their own independent committees. They should convene a constituent assembly of the working class to abolish all repressive and communal laws, and to draw up a new constitution for themselves. Such a constitution should be based on principles of social equality, in order to ensure genuine democracy and reorganize the society for the benefit of the oppressed, not for the profit of a tiny layer of a parasitic class.
On June 17, the Assistant Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), Sri Lanka, Comrade Saman Gunadasa participated in the online (Zoom) meeting held by the Colombo Action Committee (CAC). The meeting was organized to clarify the political, theoretical and organizational issues required in the fight to free the political prisoners including comedian Nathasha Edrisooriya, to defend freedom of art and expression and against government repression. There is no doubt that one would expect that, in attending the meeting, Saman Gunadasa would make an important contribution representing the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). But soon it was made clear that his intention was to disrupt the entire discussion.
SEP-SL Asst Secretary Saman Gunadasa
Saman was enraged by CAC president Sanjaya Jayasekera’s insistence on the necessity to fight to build an international alliance of workers’ action committees, for which, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) has given the initiative. Sanjaya arrived at this conclusion through a detailed objective analysis of the economic, political and historical factors behind Nathasha’s arrest.
Saman intervened, declaring the following: “Socialist Equality Party is the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Sanjaya Wilson Jayasekara has been expelled from SEP for breaking SEP discipline.” In keeping with his practice of bludgeoning with any blunt weapon, Saman referred to a certain blog page reposting theSocialist.LK’s articles. Deliberately distorting facts, he claimed that, “he [Sanjaya] is using a blog called ICFI-1953 to promote him. This blog publicly accuses the International Committee.” This is a shameless attempt to seek to call upon a perfect lie for his assistance. But it was clear that Saman did not possess any real political argument against Sanjaya.
“We have launched a national and international campaign on Nathasha Edrisooriya through the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS),” Saman announced. But there was nothing more to say about the campaign he refers to, beyond the fact that they have published two articles in WSWS, one in Sinhala and later another one in English. They described the incident of Nathasha’s arrest and expressed a lukewarm protest. That is because the party regime has not yet even attempted to discuss this matter at least among the party’s own membership – let alone a campaign among the public.
Later, Saman intervened again to say as follows:
“These comrades may have an idea about where religiosity and racism are leading to. It is required to have a clear picture of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Whom does it represent? What is its program? This meeting has been organized by a group working against its (ICFI’s) program; working to suppress it; working to slander its program… It is necessary to expose it as a basic step in the fight to defend Natasha Edirisuriya.
“The International Committee of the Fourth International organizes the working class.” Saying that it is “presenting a scientific program and fighting for it”, Saman reiterated that “as part of it, our struggle is to fight against all pseudo-left movements with programs of this type“.
According to Saman, the main criterion that determines the class character of CAC is the fact that two comrades who were victimized by the conspiracies of the SEP regime are in it. He had nothing to say about the fact that a number of comrades, who are active SEP members, are envaged in that committee too, since the struggle to build the CAC last year. Saman had nothing to say about the essential points of CAC’s political analysis, political positions, program and class base etc.
However, it has been affirmed through his intervention that, although the SEP bureaucracy initially acted upon the assumption that the possibility of Colombo Action Committee emerging as a genuine revolutionary organization of the working class is negligible and it can be ignored, in the context of it being established within the working-class movement, they are now convinced that they can no longer ignore it. They are compelled to go all out to destroy it.
CAC was not only founded upon the perspective of the International Committee from its inception, but also it sent the report of its establishment to the WSWS for publishing. The report was presented to the editor-in-chief of its Sri Lanka section, comrade K. Ratnayake, and his reaction was that ” [w]e are not publishing the report you have sent to the WSWS because it is a report from a committee you have formed without the approval of the Socialist Equality Party.” He has not been able to provide any other reason for his decision until this date, and still maintains his subjective opposition despite the objective fact that it (CAC) was founded on the basis of the statement published by SEP on July 20, 2022. In contrast to this behavior, the July 20, 2022 perspective states that, “The foundations for the Democratic and Socialist Congress need to be laid by the workers and rural toilers themselves through the establishment of action committees…” The statement, towards the end of it, further affirmed that, “[t]he Socialist Equality Party is prepared and determined to assist and provide the political direction necessary for the development of the mass movement for the establishment of the Congress.” Thus, it is clear who has acted against the party, and the policies of the International Committee.
Marxism is a science. Science begins its task by distinguishing between the ‘reality’ revealed by proximity senses and perception, and the ‘reality’ developed through the process of complex and extended analysis and theoretical abstraction. The SEP regime, including Saman and Ratnayake, has not cared about this principle at all in tackling the said question.
As we explained in this very meeting, Saman’s aim was, under the guise of opposing the CAC, to undermine the struggle which the CAC had taken to the fore with Nathasha’s imprisonment. Although the words, “willingness and determination to provide necessary support and guide in political direction” implied adherence to the policy of the International Committee, the majority of the SEP regime always subordinated the Action Committee program to their own subjective responses rather than to the rich historical experiences of the Trotskyist working-class movement. As reflected from their own actions, they do not believe that the working class can build its own organizations. This is why the Action Committee for the Defense of Freedom of Art and Expression (ACDAE), which started in 2019, was disbanded, and instead of fighting for convincing about the necessity of action committees and leading the workers to build action committees, they replaced themselves for action committees and then unsuccessfully called the workers to join them.
ACDAE led two very successful political campaigns. Comrade Sanjaya was then its president. These campaigns were able to win exceptional support from workers, artists, intellectuals and youth. The party regime consciously intervened and dissolved it. The regime argued that the formation of action committees was part of the recruitment of members into the party, and that they were formed from among those who agreed with the party’s perspectives. These views have nothing to do with the principles of the International Committee and Trotskyism. Accordingly, Saman’s intervention, rather than being simply opposing those who have been ‘expelled’ from the party, and a matter of mere subjective enmity, weighs more.
As stated in the CAC’s statement with the heading, “Free Comedian Nathasha Edrisooriya!”, “she has been hunted, because holding free opinions, appearing for them and socializing them through artistic creations are challenging the existing social hegemony. Accusations of insulting Buddhism, destroying religious harmony and insulting girls’ colleges have been raised against her. Its aim is not only to trample on the freedom of art creation, speech and expression, but also to crush in the bud the feelings of equality that are generally burning in the oppressed people and the emancipatory feelings that arise from women themselves against the capitalist pressure placed on women”.
The article published in the Sinhala section of the WSWS on June 1, on the same day the CAC statement was issued, testifies to the shallowness of their approach to the problem. It wrote; “the proximate cause of the campaign against her for defaming Buddhism, was her recent stand-up comedy program which satirized a legend in Buddhist literature and the ethics of female students’ conduct in Buddhist schools.” We feel that these two paragraphs represent the exact difference between us and the SEP adopted line.
Further, the campaign carried out by CAC is also against the above beliefs of the party regime. Accordingly, the party regime attacks the initiative taken by CAC and, despite what they think they are doing, their actions will essentially serve the interests of the capitalist class. This occurs in a situation in which the ruling class cannot survive without the support of an organization with a revolutionary heritage, like the SEP. In the face of the government’s intensifying attack on the working class, a revolutionary party cannot continue to exist as a revolutionary party without basing itself more and more on principles, and its own historical foundations, and fighting to actively seize the leadership of the class struggle. The lesson of history is that, whenever this task is avoided, the party will be bereft of the working class interests, bewildered and intimidated by the class struggle, and will play an extremely vicious role in crushing emerging revolutionary movements. That is why the SEP should take steps to analyze this situation on a historical basis.
Raising the consciousness of the working class is the task of the revolutionary party and it is neither just a journalistic task, nor a mere propaganda task. Man has always changed himself in order to change the world, and anyone who rejects this theory does not serve the working class. The contrary is an impossibility.
Sanjaya speaking at a SEP Colombo Fort picket on 17 June 2019
The leadership of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) – Sri Lanka recently (06 May) released three documents officially announcing that it has expelled two of its leading comrades, Nandana Nannetti and Sanjaya Jayasekera from the Party, almost half a year after the act. The announcement included a statement, a resolution of the Political Committee, which comprises a bureaucratic clique, and a letter by party’s General Secretary (GS) to its membership, each relating to the expulsion of the aforesaid comrades.
theSocialist.LK published a prelude to opening a discussion on the issues relating to these expulsions and the fight waged by the SEP-Left faction for revolutionary principles, theory and organization, and two articles by comade Nannetti followed. This illustrative write-up is followed by my reply to Deepal Jayasekara, the GS, against my expulsion, and will continue to brief the struggle of the left faction, as another step toward helping to draw the necessary political lessons and conclusions.
One fact should be stressed at the outset. The membership and all sympathisers of the party will recognize the undeniable fact that the SEP-Left faction’s fight for a revolutionary Party always centred on securing the long traditions of Bolshevism and defending the struggle for Trotskyist permanent revolution. The party of the world socialist revolution in Sri Lanka and, mainly, of South Asia has to be saved, strengthened and built as the mass party of the revolutionary proletariat, resolving the historic crisis of the leadership. This requires a resolute fight against those who stand against these principles.
Why Now?
Anyone who first reads from the SEP statement the news that the said comrades have been expelled after a number of months since the same was done, will necessarily ask the unavoidable question: why is this revelation made just now?
The reason given by the statement is that “[t]he party decided not to publicize their expulsion, hoping that they would reconsider their increasingly destructive behavior and refusal to abide by party decisions. But, later this hope proved to be in vain. Instead, Nandana and Sanjaya have stepped up their open anti-party activities.”
What does this statement mean? The party regime expected Sanjaya and Nandana to admit the allegations levelled against them by the regime and be qualified to be awarded the party membership. In any event, there was no communication of such ‘hopes’ from GS, who for half a year failed to abide by the provisions of the Constitution in respect of an expulsion of a party member.
By stating so, this leadership covertly conceals history, the struggle waged by the left faction including Nandana and Sanjaya, and the political and organizational questions that remained unresolved within the party, even though all attempts were made by the faction at all instances to open discussions to resolve the issues. It also suppresses the facts leading to continuous calculated attempts by the leadership to silence dissent within the party, embodied by the left faction and few other comrades.
The obvious reason for this sudden revelation by the Party regime was because all its attempts to politically silence Sanjaya and Nandana failed. The activities of the Colombo Action Committee (CAC), of which these two comrades are members, were denounced as being hostile to the party, and its statements were refused to be published in the WSWS, as its Sri Lanka Editor claimed, the CAC was not ‘approved’ by the Party prior to its establishment. However, in spite of CAC’s open requests to politically explain the so-called ‘hostility’, the party regime never made such explanations, even to-date. Instead, the regime took steps to ‘expose’ the conditions pertaining to the expulsions of these comrades, which explains nothing and draws no political lessons, but rather raises a series of questions that these write-ups are intended to answer.
Personal Accusations
It is quite obvious that the approach of the SEP statement in levelling highly subjective personal accusations against Sanjaya in the paragraphs 4 to 7 thereof is not the way of Marxists. The accusation has no basis and is factually incorrect: he joined the party in 2009 just as he graduated. Thereafter, he undertook and was conferred a number of leadership roles and was a writer for the world socialist website. He was elected to the CC in both congresses held in 2015 and 2018, and selected to the Political Committee (PC). In 2018, Comrade Dias himself recommended the presence of Sanjaya, being a lawyer, in the PC. Now, the leadership should respond, at what stage did the party turn to psychoanalysis and subject Sanjaya to such analysis and find that their accusations are merited?
These baseless allegations made for the first time in this statement does nothing but nauseatingly expose the petty mentality which unconsciously led the middle-class stratum of the Party bureaucracy in their relationship with Sanjaya. Pathetic! The regime knows these accusations only appeal to the gullible and backward layers attracted to the party, upon which it endeavors to tighten its strength.
Before the Expulsion
Sanjaya’s expulsion for sharing two Facebook posts of the Colombo Action Committee was preceded by his suspension for several months for intervening, with a revolutionary perspective, in the historic mass struggles of the last year (2022) and delivering a public lecture at Public University, GotaGoGama on 15 June. The details regarding this unprincipled suspension which was vehemently objected to by Sanjaya in his self-defensive letter to the party is a matter that could be considered separately.
While the statement says that the Party was careful not to publicize these expulsions with good hopes, it does not explain why it suppressed the fact, even from the membership of the party, that Sanjaya resigned from the membership of the Political Committee and from the Chairmanship of the Action Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Art and Expression (ACDAE), for reasons stipulated, in late September 2021. No political assessment of this resignation was done, no official communication made and explanation provided to the membership, nor discussion held either with Sanjaya or within the party membership in this regard. Being an all powerful clique, they very well knew, there was no space for such comradely discussions; so why bother?
The ‘purge’ against Sanjaya commenced since then. In November 2021, Sanjaya joined the debate on the stance of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) in respect of the right of and the slogan of self-determination of the oppressed nations, and defended the ICFI analysis and position in that regard. When comrade Nandana was suspended on the allegation that he distorted the ICFI’s stance in that regard, Sanjaya stood by Nandana, in Locale meetings and in one Central Committee (CC) meeting, as the allegation was wrong and suspension unfounded.
Due to this reason, Sanjaya was imposed two specific conditions – which were akin to standing orders of the party Congress – parallel to such imposition on Nandana, to be specifically bound by, as a prerequisite for permitting to attend the third national Congress of the Party. In response to the imposition of these conditions, which both Sanjaya and Nandana admitted, Sanjaya wrote a long letter, dated 08 February 2022, addressed to the then General Secretary, comrade Wije Dias, denying the several allegations of discipline. This letter also explained the reasons for my resignation from PC, giving eight items of political issues regarding the party’s political engagement and the work of the Editorial Board. It stated as follows:
“The decision to resign from the membership of the PC was never caused by subjugation to middle class pressures to abandon my revolutionary responsibilities, but was taken as the last resort, when I was finally unable to bear the pressure I had to bear as a member of the PC itself. This pressure was due to the non-availability of democratic space to vent out my constructive, but critical and dissenting views, which would be debatable. The following observations are based on my experience and understanding of the matters within the Party, and are required to be discussed seriously, patiently, democratically and in a very healthy and comradely manner without any sense of intimidation or suppression or political profiling. Having often been subjected to political profiling i.e. being blamed as being subjected to middle class (alien) pressures whenever a dissenting view was expressed during PC meetings – my experience was that there was no such healthy environment within the PC for such serious discussions of the following, inter alia…”
This letter also explained in detail why Sanjaya was compelled to resign as chairman of ACDAE: The growing cynicism and lack of trust of the leadership in him, lack of support from the party leadership, the use of the action committee only as a tool of party recruitment and propaganda, converting it to another organ of the party, which he objected to.
Contribution in the Third National Congress
Party’s third National Congress, which was called unconstitutionally, was postponed due to the objections raised by the left-faction in its letter to the party dated 10 February 2022, demanding discussion and resolution of political disputes before the Congress, and revocation of Comrade Nandana’s suspension, to enable him to participate in pre-congress discussions.
With the intervention of the International Committee the Congress was thus postponed, but its advice was disregarded: to discuss and resolve the internal disputes before the Congress.
On 15 May, intervening in the congress proceedings, Sanjaya stated as follows:
“In the World Socialist Web Site, we have noted that the manifestation of the global economic crisis experienced in Sri Lanka, against the backdrop of the contradictions of the world imperialist capitalist system that has exploded through the Russia-Ukraine war, has marked a decisive development in a series of struggles of the global working class. We have made the effort to bring to a higher level the theoretical and political struggle against the pseudoleft and struggled relentlessly against capitalist reformism, nationalism and trade unionism as the most essential foundations for the task of giving a revolutionary orientation to the class struggles in Sri Lanka and building the party as the mass party of the workers and the oppressed. We have advanced the program of an international alliance of independent action committees as the practical political action of this struggle.
The experience of the people’s struggles against the Rajapaksa government has taught the party the necessity to bind itself organically to such struggles and their developments, not to be alien to them, but to provide theoretical, perspective-wise and essentially practical leadership promptly and at all stages in the coming revolutionary struggles during the decade of the socialist revolution. Our international movement’s clarification that, had there been a section of our party in the Egyptian revolution, the direction of that revolution would have changed, has a direct relevance to our party in Sri Lanka.
Social and political dialectics and ideologies that develop in the working class, youth and students, as well as the party’s perspectives, program, and practical activities, all of these must be subjected to sharp analyzes and critical discussions by the comrades of the party in all party bodies, and this is the most essential requirement of materializing the party tasks that have been placed before us through the perspective of the congress. That is to establish inner party democracy. Lenin described the organizational method of democratic centralism in the revolutionary party as “freedom to criticize, unity in action”.
In order to carry out the historical political tasks assigned to the party, as explained in the Congress resolutions, I propose that the party leadership and the membership should commit themselves after this Congress to raising the level of education and critical intelligence of the party comrades, by defeating the particular “anti-intellectualism” rooted in the party for a considerable period of time, as well as by overcoming the “theoretical and critical poverty” of our comrades, to advance the party with new energy.”
The party bureaucracy did not want to commit to these critical demands of the objective development within and outside the party, but was hell-bent on suppressing the left-faction, first targeting Nandana and Sanjaya.
Intervention in the GotaGoGama
Since early April 2022, the left faction was demanding that the party take every step to fight for the leadership of the mass struggles or to endeavor to impose a considerable influence upon the struggles against the Rajapaksha government. The party regime considered it alien to the mass struggles and let it be exploited and derailed by the pseudo-left. In its fight for active intervention in the mass struggles, the left faction was guided by the lessons of the experiences of the Egypt revolution and the following counter-revolution.
Sanjaya in the historic Galleface Greens lecture on 15 June 2022
A letter sent to the Central Committee in the early hours of 09 April 2022 in this regard will testify to this struggle by the left-faction, and will be published here sooner.
The issue of calling to prepare the working class for a general political strike had already been raised by comrade Nandana and others and this demand was rejected by leadership saying that neither the party, nor the working, class was ready for such a general strike. The masses had to be prepared for a general strike during a period of time, and hence the demand of the left faction.
Even the invitations by party sympathizers who were active in the mass struggles to intervene in the protest site at Galle Face Greens (GotaGoGama) were refused by the members of the leadership, saying the place was not safe for party cadre.
It is in these circumstances, that Sanjaya was offered to deliver a lecture on the topic of “Freedom of Art, the Experience of the Struggle and the Way Forward”. This was communicated to the party leadership as soon as it was received, about two weeks before the event. The CC statement shamefully suppresses the necessary facts and correspondence, only to serve one purpose, to justify Sanjaya’s suspension for intervening in the mass struggles with the perspective of the International Committee. The party bureaucracy tried to block Sanjaya’s participation in the Public University lecture at the eleventh hour, and led the Locale to pass an urgent resolution against his imminent intervention, in the absence of himself, comrades Ananda Wakkumbura and Fareeda who were Locale members.
Sanjaya’s self-defensive letter dated 15 August 2022, consisting of 20 pages including all correspondence in this regard, clearly explains why the suspension was arbitrary.
In any event, it should be stressed that, in the absence of any prohibition for Sanjaya’s intervention in GotaGoGama, not representing the party there, even till the event was advertised in social media, the decision to go ahead with the intervention was a politically calculated, conscious one taken by the comrades of the left-faction. There was no option but taking the risk of being subjected to disciplinary actions by the party regime, for not abiding by its last-hour resolutions. That risk was taken, because the comrades correctly assessed and firmly believed in the historical significance of that intervention.
Sanjaya’s said letter in its concluding paragraphs aptly stated as follows:
“The PC proceeding to suspend three leading comrades of the party taking refuge in its bureaucratic maneuvers, while subjecting them for a considerable time to continuous slanders, suppression and intimidation within Locales and membership meetings, just because they have refused to be “yes-men”, is a rotten indication of a danger that the party leadership and then the whole party is decelerating into a political degeneration within.”
This danger should be defeated. That is the responsibility of a conscious, critical membership, which should have no other bias but the working class.
The principles on Party Unity in the SWP resolution (from The Struggle for a Proletarian Party) referred to in the SEP statement equally applies today:
” The Socialist Workers Party is a revolutionary Marxian party, based on a definite program, whose aim is the organisation of the working class in the struggle for power and the transformation of the existing social order. All of its activities, its methods and its internal regime are subordinated to this aim and are designed to serve it.
Only a self-acting and critical-minded membership is capable of forging and consolidating such a party and of solving its problems by collective thought, discussion and experience. From this follows the need of assuring the widest party democracy in the ranks of the organisation.”
Expulsion
As mentioned above, Sanjaya’s expulsion from the party membership, without any disciplinary inquiry, and any opportunity to hear an appeal, was based on sharing two facebook posts of the CAC.
This expulsion was objected to by Sanjaya in his letter dated 24 November 2022 addressed to Comrade Deepal Jayasekara, which was also intended to partly respond to the 12 November CC’s Resolution aforesaid.
This letter, which is self-explanatory, is reproduced below, and will answer a number of questions arising from the documents published by the party.
Questions of discipline demand political explanations, which the party bureaucracy continuously failed to arrive at.
While the SEP bureaucracy cites the SWP Resolution to attack its expelled comrades on the issue of discipline, it fatally fails to draw the necessary lessons from that resolution which intended to prevent a rift within the Party.
Sanjaya invited to speak at a meeting of Rationalists on freedom of expression, 24 August 2019
24 November 2022
Deepal Jayasekera, General Secretary,
Socialist Equality Party,
Sri Lanka,
Dear Comrade,
I am perturbed, but not surprised, to receive your email dated 19 November 2022 (10.50am), along with the attached document, communicating to me a Central Committee (CC) decision expelling me from the membership of the Socialist Equality Party-Sri Lanka (SEP). Please be informed that I do not agree with the said decision of the CC and PC to expel me, and vehemently object to the positions taken by the Party leadership and communicated to me as aforesaid.
I am perturbed, but not surprised, to receive your email dated 19 November 2022 (10.50am), along with the attached document, communicating to me a Central Committee (CC) decision expelling me from the membership of the Socialist Equality Party-Sri Lanka (SEP). Please be informed that I do not agree with the said decision of the CC and PC to expel me, and vehemently object to the positions taken by the Party leadership and communicated to me as aforesaid.
This letter is to briefly communicate my immediate response to your decision and I will write more for further clarifications, whenever required.
Once again, this decision of the CC and PC shows the continuation of the party leadership’s undemocratic and bureaucratic approach to avoid and suppress serious political questions and organizational matters of the Party, and to cover it up with fake assertions of democratic centralism.
The procedure adopted to expel me from the membership is flawed and antidemocratic. According to your letter, the decision to expel has been taken by the CC at a meeting held on 12 November 2022. You provide no report as to what were the issues debated, what were the salient points of issues for and against the proposal to expel, and which Comrade made which submission. As with my previous suspension of membership for delivering a lecture in GotaGoGama during recent mass struggles, once again, you have not issued me any charges and time to respond, and no disciplinary inquiry has been held. On top of that, you have continuously rejected any discussion with me and Comrade Nandana (or Wakkumbura) on the disputed issues, though such a discussion was repeatedly requested by us and other concerned comrades.
Tragically, your letter also fails to mention anything discussed with the other members of the International Committee, including Comrade David North, about the disciplinary measures taken against myself, comrades Nandana and Wakkumbura and what political clarifications made during such discussions, in relation to our previous suspensions or instant expulsions.
Your letter is intended to misdirect and suppress very material facts and therefore is dishonest. While mentioning about my suspension – which suspension was extended by the Party leadership including yourself for a period of five months without communicating to me any decision taken by the Party and not giving me any discussion with the party, and intended to keep me politically dead and inactive for an indefinite time – your letter suppresses the material fact that I sent a 20-page long letter (dated 15 August 2022) to you against my suspension, with all facts and correspondence. Not even a word uttered in your letter about this important letter, where I deny all your allegations, and you do not mention whether it was discussed in the PC or CC and with IC, and among the membership. However, I am aware that just one or two days after you sent me your 19 November letter, you had already shared your letter with the membership. Not even natural justice!
Failing to mention the aforesaid, in order to falsify facts and hoodwink gullible membership, you only mention that ” Sanjaya has not so far openly admitted that he has breached party discipline, and is continuing to justify his act” (translation mine). If I was supposed to accept your allegation that I had breached party discipline, what is the purpose of requesting by your letter dated 25 July 2022 to respond to your letter of suspension? Does that mean the suspension and its confirmation were already decided, whatever be my reply and objections? Also, why do you fail to mention where and how I have justified my act and how you dispute my justification?
Now, the new allegations against me for expelling me from the membership is sharing two Facebook posts of Colombo Action Committee (CACPS)! The party leadership had no reason to object to me being elected as Chairperson of the Action Committee, but raised guns when I shared, as I should, two Facebook posts of the action committee. Your so-called warning had no merit, and did not contain any responses to the issues raised by the relevant document of the action committee, and it was solely intended to silence dissent.
It is my best knowledge that Comrade Nandana, for a number of times, even at a CC meeting where I and Nandana last attended early this year, requested to have a discussion on the political matters at issue, but the leadership continuously failed to provide it. Instead, on fabulous allegations, the leadership suspended his membership, extended it, permitted some members of the party leadership to spread lies against us, closed all room for free discussion in Locale meetings, and forced comrade Nandana to resort to openly defend himself and his revolutionary personality within the party membership and among the working class at large.
The party leadership showed its extensive sectarian attitude to recent April-July struggles, by turning its back to these struggles and not taking adequate measures to actively engage the party, its student movement or action committees to fight for the revolutionary programme within the mass movement. The 20 July Statement calling for a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and the poor cuts across this sectarianism of the Party leadership.
The Colombo Action Committee was established by delegates, in compliance with this 20 July statement, to wage struggles ahead to build a mass anti-capitalist movement.
Sanjaya, Nandana, Nihal , Udayaprema, and a number of other comrades of the Party are fighting for ICFI’s revolutionary perspective within the Action Committee.
Two statements sent by CACPS to WSWS Sri Lanka Editor were not published in WSWS, and I am aware that the Sri Lankan editor has communicated to the Action Committee no valid reason for not publishing the statements. CACPS asked for any such reasons from the Editor, but no reply was received. Subsequently, the CACPS, in order to respond to the quarries of its members and to tell the truth to the working class, published two posts in its social media (fb) page that the statements have not been published, and expressed its willingness to work hand-in-hand with the WSWS in the future.
None of the political issues raised by the CACPS or its members or any issue with the CACPS itself were addressed by the party leadership (relevant documents are available at fb.com/colomboacps page). It adamantly decided to ignore and not to reply to the several questions raised or to explain its opposition regarding the Action Committee, which is gaining momentum within sections of the working class, urban poor and youth.
Instead of explaining these political issues for the political clarification of the working class and the youth, the leadership of our party decided to witch-hunt those who shared these posts and ‘purge’ the party of them. Sanjaya and Nandana are victims of that ‘purge’. The party leadership seems to have assumed that its decision of nonreplying to the several political questions raised by CACPS is not detrimental to the health of the Party, but retaining members connected to the Action Committee is more harmful and should be expelled. The leadership has thus decided not to tackle the political issues politically, but to administratively ‘purge’ those who the leadership think are instrumental in raising those questions. How pathetic!
A sectarian leadership of a revolutionary party would be best characterized, in Trotsky’s words, by identifying it with ‘alienism to great historical movements, a hardened conservative mentality, smug narrowness, and a most primitive political cowardice‘. Taking all matters into consideration, this description aptly suits the character of the present leadership of our party.
The Leadership which asserts centralism without democracy that makes room for free discussion and criticism, stops at the dead end of bureaucratism and opportunism. Organizational centralism that is not subject to internal democratic debate in the party pushes the leadership towards this retrogression. Then, centralism is another cover for bureaucracy. Party discipline is the unity of action thus subjected to democratic free discussion and criticism. Otherwise, subjecting party membership to a so-called discipline of centralism is to strengthen bureaucracy. This is fatally inimical to the class struggle.
Lenin reiterated:
“We have more than once already enunciated our theoretical views on the importance of discipline and on how this concept is to be understood in the party of the working class. We defined it as: unity of action, freedom of discussion and criticism. Only such Discipline is worthy of the democratic party of the advanced class.” [Party Discipline and the Fight Against the Pro-Cadet Social-Democrats, 1906]
In ‘I stake my Life'(1933), Trotsky, referring to Stalinist party bureaucracy, aptly stated, “fear of criticism is fear of the masses. The bureaucracy is afraid of the people.” The present leadership of our party is afraid of democratic criticism and therefore fears the masses, so the class struggle. It then wishes to be seperate from the mass movement. It even feared to call the working class for the preparation of a political general strike. That is why the leadership considers criticism is hostile to itself, and uses administrative measures to keep criticism and discussion within the party suppressed.
Having long been stuck in its comfort zone, immune from mass struggles and moving away from deep-root social dialectics, the Party has been suffering from a severe leadership crisis and is rotting within. Its general membership lacks in-depth understanding of the theoretical nuances necessary for political clarity and largely avoids political debates among the masses. I have succinctly pointed out these developments in my 15 August letter. The analyses of the articles published originally in the World Socialist Web Site Sinhala section have been lacking theoretical depth for a considerable time (raising these issues in the Locale meetings has been prohibited ). I once again wish to reiterate my statement (attached hereto) I made at the third Congress of the Party, as a Central Committee member of the party since 2015 till the last Congress.
The party leadership never wished to face these challenges, but wished to ‘purge’ those who raised the issues. Regrettably, this reactionary approach will not help to build revolutionary leadership within the mass movement.
The all-time panacea used against political dissidents within the party is once again used against Sanjaya and Nandana: being subject to middle class pressures. What is the political content of these middle class pressures ?; What is its political characteristic, natue?; What political deviations these pressures have manifested in ?; Is this middle class tendency ‘purged’ finally when these two comrades Sanjaya and Nandana are expelled? The CC has to seriously explain these questions, inter alia.
I hereby request to revoke my expulsion immediately, and open the floors for a discussion. Once again I wish to request such a discussion, preferably under the supervision and guidance of the IC, with the Party, to discuss all the political issues upon which, it’s no secret, that there is an open and well-known rift grown between the party leadership and a faction of comrades within the party including myself, comrade Nandana and others. Our expulsion is intended to intimidate and threaten the known members of this group within the party and suppress the political issues we have been raising.
The future is an epoch of intense class struggles. I reiterate I have one and only bias, a bias to the working class. As such, I do not hesitate to risk my life to defend the true heritage which the ICFI has been long fighting for, to complete the unfinished tasks of the past century in ours.
The Socialist Equality Party, Sri Lanka, released three special documents on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) (Sinhala) last Friday, 06 May 2023. They are about the expulsion of the two comrades who worked in the leadership of the party, Sanjaya Jayasekera and Nandana Nannetti.
Among those articles, one is under the caption, “SEP Central Committee Resolution on the anti-Party Activities of Nandana Nannetti and Sanjay Jayasekera” and another document by SEP General Secretary, Deepal Jayasekara is captioned, ‘Letter to SEP members regarding the expulsion of Nandana Nannetti and Sanjaya Jayasekera’. I am forwarding to publish herewith, the letter that I sent to the party leadership in early January 2023, clarifying the issues arising from the above-mentioned Central Committee resolution, passed in November 2022, and exposing the true nature of the allegations therein. This reply of mine was concealed from the membership by the party regime.
We are publishing this letter of reply in order to expose the cheap scheming behavior of the party bureaucracy and to open the space for the necessary discussion to reverse these negative developments.
The regime’s suggestion that what has arisen is a disciplinary issue is an attempt to divert the cadre and the working class from the essential task of political preparation. In fact, on the contrary, there were prologed political differences between the party regime and the Left faction.
Chief among them are as follows:
Rejection of the left group’s request for a political assessment about party cadres deserting the party even under the most favorable conditions within the class struggle.
Not taking forward the struggle to solve the problems related to the growing disregard for principles, anti-intellectualism, backwardness, theoretical and political poverty in the articles of the Sinhala section of the World Socialist Web Site and pragmatism.
Examples:
Aligning the party with the Rajapaksa government’s reactionary racist campaign, disregarding the SEP left faction’s opposition to the forced cremation of bodies of Muslim victims of Covid-19.
Derailment from issues of principle and revolutionary tradition: For example, the regime subverted the political position proposed by the Left faction that the party should oppose the persecution of Ranjan Ramanayake (the whistleblower and then a Member of parliament from the United National Party) by the government supported by the Buddhist establishment, stating that such a stance is pandering to the middle classes.
The leadership’s role in confusing the perspective of the International Committee that the self-determination of the oppressed nations could only be achieved under the dictatorship of the working class, and the far-reaching cosequence of these distortions to the unity of the woring class across ethnic divisions.
The leadership’s position that the party or the class was not ready for a political general strike during the teachers’ struggle.
Backing off from the campaign, initiated by the international committee, that the schools should not open until the safety of students is assured during the Covid period.
Endeavours of the Left faction to base the party on the policy of the International Committee in respect of genuine action committees. Also, the left faction objected to the party deceiving themselves by writing reports about non-existing action committees, instead of taking a genuine struggle forward within the working class to build action committees; the left faction raised objections when the bureacracy knowingly worked to disband the once vibrant and genuine action committee, the ‘Action Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Art and Expression’, and for the bureaucracy misusing its name.
The turn of the bureaucracy, in building the party and developing the website (WSWS) to meet that end, to propagandist substitutes like collecting social media ‘likes’, instead of actively engaging in developing the theoretical and political analysis and persuading the working class into accepting it.
The art sub-committee of the editorial board has been dissolved for many years, thereby preventing the discussions on art criticism and cultural essays by the Sri Lanka section and, thus, negecting the contributions by the party in those areas.
Suppressing political, theoretical and organizational disagreements in party councils from locale councils and political committee to membership meetings in an authoritarian and bureaucratic manner, contrary to the principles of democratic centralism. Prohibiting party comrades from discussing political and organizational issues between party regional locales. The opposition of the left faction to the party’s submission to the needs of an undemocratic bureaucracy which ignores the party’s constitution and traditions.
Rejection by the Left faction of the leadership’s tendency to ally itself with the pseudo-left on several occasions.
The left faction’s opposition and taking actions against the party bureacrcay’s sectarian and destructive practice in making room for the middle class and the pseudo-left to take over the command of the mass struggles, without actively intervening in giving a revolutionary socialist leadership to the massive workers’ and popular struggles that arose in Sri Lanka in 2022, as a peak in the phenomenon of the resurgence of the class struggles globally.
Our faction is ready to discuss the political content of these issues in detail in the future.
Therefore, we believe that the document that follows contains important lessons for the workers and the oppressed. This is because the entire working class is faced with the critical historical challenge of solving the crisis of the revolutionary leadership of the world working class, especially that of Sri Lanka and South Asia.
***
Dear Comrade Jayasekara,
Regarding your letter dated November 19, 2022 informing that I have been expelled from the party.
The party leadership has taken a decision which is politically and morally unacceptable, which ignores the principles of the Fourth International and the constitution of the party itself. I express my objection regarding this decision and, demand for taking steps to correct it.
You have accused me of openly violating the Bolshevik principles upon which the party is based and stated that I have been expelled accordingly. As stated in your letter, “..political theoretical or organizational differences should be discussed only within the party.” Can you say that you, who is hurling this accusation at me, was the one who is responsible for preventing such a discussion? The leadership did not allow a discussion. My letters were not discussed. There were no replies to them. No. The PC said that it was a shame to discuss them. In the last CC that I participated in, I requested to schedule a discussion on this and requested that I should be given 45 minutes to forward my opinion. No one except Comrade Sanjaya approved it. To answer a mountain of accusations, I was given only the 5 minutes time which was given to all the others. You introduced it to the membership as democracy. Earlier, the International Committee intervened and adjourned the conference, but the leadership deliberately prevented the development of a discussion. Only a single membership meeting was held during the 3 months. It too was filled with distortions, insults and slander.
The letters I wrote were concealed from the membership and, certain facts in those letters were misrepresented to try and mislead the members. finally, you banned my membership on June 18, 2022 in a very conspiratorial manner. After squandering five months without any investigation or discussion, I was expelled from the party. This is a result of a conspiracy.
I informed you, when the conspiracy was launched in Ambalangoda Local. Refer the letter I sent you on May 19, 2022. Instead of looking into it and solving the problem, you implemented a plan to ban my membership. On June 18, my membership was suspended because I stated that machinations were used in the 3rd Congress and in its preparation. All I asked for was a discussion.
You have completely ignored the struggle that Sanjay, myself and other members waged unceasingly demanding in writing and verbally for a discussion. You consciously worked to isolate us by spreading among the members that we are not ready for a discussion.
Therefore, your allegation that I have publicly criticized the comrades in the party leadership ignoring the Bolshevik tradition of discussing internal issues, is extremely fraudulent and hypocritical. You cite as an example the defensive measures I took against the attempts of comrades Marlon and Rohantha to implicate Sanjay and me with the CIA. But you have nothing to say about making those implications. No inquiry was held. You are now trying to defend this sinister act.
The “News Atlas” had argued that Gotagogama activist Chamara Jeevantha Dedduwage, who had worked as a volunteer at PAFFREL between 2009-2020, and had CIA connections because of his service to the above organization. So the “News Atlas” argued that, the Gotagogama was an American regime change scheme. Dedduwage was a Sanjay’s FB friend. Marlon distributed the relevant video to the local members through WhatsApp and used it to spread the predatory propaganda that Sanjay had CIA connections. Sanjay put a stop to this effort with a very clear analysis on 17th July 2022 on this video.
However later, Rohantha spread these allegations against both Sanjaya and myself. I had no space to answer, not just because of the party ban, but also because that I was convinced by experience that these actions would be approved by the party leadership. For example, in the 3rd Congress, Rohantha made an absurd and conspiratorial statement, that I was chasing away those who are joining the party, accusing them of being police spies. This absurd conspiratorial statement against me was defended by the leadership by its silence.
So, the FB was the only alternative available to me to explain matters to party members and workers to protect myself from this dangerous witch hunt. Now you continue the witch hunt from the other side. You say that Nandana has made false accusations against these comrades and exposed them and the party to a witch hunt. I wrote that people who do such things can even kill me. Now you are distorting that statement too and making it seem like I am exposing the party to a witch hunt.
However, comrade Jayasekera, truth cannot be concealed forever. Especially under the present conditions of the class struggle, if the party leadership is not prepared to be corrected, it is unavoidable that the truth will stand up against it. But this is what you are saying: “We will destroy you in every way, you must allow it. That is what discipline is.” For the working class, discipline is the understanding gained through genuine democratic discussion to act on the perspectives needed to liberate itself from capitalism. It is the way to open space for that.
You don’t accept this. When allowed to speak (only 5 minutes! We asked for time to explain things!) you angrily say that you are talking about a democracy instead of the issue. That’s what you say to the members, but you don’t see the damage the lack of democratic discussion has done to the party.
Your letter further says that I condemned the party for publishing the statements made by party comrades on the World Socialist Web Site, as statements made by workers. Are you saying that I should approve your actions when you are presenting a Central Committee member of the party as an ordinary plantation worker, or when you are posting a photograph of hundreds of workers of another organization introducing it as a photograph of the Health Action Committee, to deceive the World Socialist Web Site, the Party and society and risk tarnishing the reputation of the WSWS and the movement? How many reports have you written to WSWS about action committees which have never been in existence on the earth? Should the damage to the site be tolerated? Can you explain the role of these actions in the development of the class consciousness of the working class?
Do you think that, instead of struggling to win over the workers, what you are doing in your search for unprincipled survival strategies, foreign to Marxism and the International committee is justifiable?
I can clearly say that these disregards were behind the party’s passive policy during the days of the struggle that emerged from April, were flowing from ignorance of the policies that the ICFI has called forth for the fifth phase. This needs to be discussed. According to you, such a discussion is possible in the party only under one condition. That is to justify whatever the leadership is doing or not doing. There is no room to discuss these issues based on the policy of the International Committee. You do not present a single political reason for the expulsion of Sanjay and me. That is, behind our expulsion is the need to avoid discussion of political issues needed to achieve objectives.
You say that the expulsion was done purely on disciplinary issues. From what political issues, are these disciplinary issues have erupted?
We are the revolutionary political party of the working class. A person who accepts that the profound problems arising in such a party are divorced from politics, is a very poor revolutionary. It is necessary to discuss and resolve these issues in a very fraternal and genuine manner. Avoiding such discussions is the easiest and most destructive path. Therefore, I suggest a proper investigation and a full discussion with the assistance of the ICFI representatives. I am ready to explain these issues in depth to the international committee. Besides, I request you to not to assume that you will be able to avoid these issues by keeping me out of the party. Allow me to state that even if I am kept out of the party, I will use all my strength to uphold the perspectives of the international committee.
You have said that “According to the International Committee, we have entered a period of uprising and that the 4-month long struggle from April was betrayed by the pseudo-left.”
You worked to stay away from it right from the beginning of the ‘struggle’. Despite the intervention of the International Committee, the leadership continued to respond in a tepid manner. As you did not believe that such a struggle could arise, you did petty work without any preparation or discussion. Now you refer to them as a Great Interventions.
The party now says the ‘Struggle’ was betrayed by the pseudo-Left. What did it gain from it? And, is it enough? Is it the maximum or the minimum? What should have been done? What needs to be improved and corrected? What was missing? You do not have an assessment and, this dismissal is a proof that you are not ready to have this essential discussion.
In the events of 2012, comrade Dave said that if there were as many cadres as in Sri Lanka, the situation would have changed. Events similar to the events in Egypt unfolded here as well. Comrade Dave mentioned that our Congress is similar to the Bolshevik Congress of 1917 in the same sense. You took the meaning of it as to mean that, ‘we had worked like Lenin’s Bolshevik Party, and received a certificate for that from North’. But you have saved only a trifle of a lesson like, “we worked, but the pseudo left betrayed “.
If we had not intervened and formed the Colombo Action Committee, I firmly say that the party would not have a powerful example of the practical validity of the perspectives compiled through the intervention of the International Committee.
SEP presented an important perspective and programme under the direction of the International Committee. However, We missed the opportunity to intervene in Gotagogama and discuss these perspectives with hundreds of thousand people by maintaining the position that we are not intervening without our party name. It is not through a miracle that Sanjaya got the opportunity through a small left-wing group that expected the party’s intervention to the ‘Aragalaya’ (struggle )- as the mobilization was popularly known- for a discussion and we were able to win a group from them soon. It was a result of the principled struggle that the party has been leading for a long time. We won them over by intervening in the ‘Aragalaya’ for the perspectives developed by the party. Some of the comrades among them had known the party for decades and had come across its literature.
As Sanjay and Nandana represent “an expression of hostile class pressure exerting on the party that has percolated through middle class sections to divert the party away from the struggle to build revolutionary leadership of the working class and for weakening the party”, in your letter, you are calling for a ferocious fight against it. This is an unexplained provocative statement. You have not given thought as to how this fight will be fought by expelling both of them from the party without any discussion or disciplinary investigation. The party should be freed from this policy which misleads the membership and thereby weakens the party. You continue to distort the party constitution in a very dangerous way. It confuses the membership and jeopardizes the future of the party. At times you completely ignore the constitution and at other times use it in a way to mean what you want when you feel it is in your favor.
Quoting paragraph (b) of the section 10 of the party constitution, your letter says that it includes, “..if a member has violated the decisions of a ..board of which he is a member, or has acted in a manner that can be considered harmful to the interests of the SEP and the working class… censuring and suspension for a period not exceeding three months or expulsion from the membership”. I accept this.
However, according to paragraph (d), a disciplinary investigation must be conducted and the member must be informed in writing that an investigation will be conducted. A member has the right to appear before the board to defend himself against all charges before the disciplinary decision is made. You have put all this in the rubbish bin and have concealed this passage from the members. Thus, I say that you are violating the provisions of the constitution regarding the protection of the interests of the party and the working class. A cadre trained in this way would not understand the tasks of the party. Not only the membership but also the working class have the right to know from which political interests you are resorting to such scams.
I would like to end this letter with a warning given by Comrade Dave to the Political Committee of the Sri Lankan section on 8th March, 1990.
“If we examine the problems of the Revolutionary Communist League, it will become clear that the dangers we have identified within the party’s recent experiences generally arise from the failure to base itself firmly on the experience of the national and international movement, including its own party.
“You develop practice without examining their relationship to the overall prior experience of the movement. To the extent that the RCL fails to take root within these historical experiences, it is being driven away from the International Committee by class pressure. We are by no means saying that this is an irreversible continuum or a dominant feature of RCL work.”
“But, as Trotsky said 50 years ago, shortly before his death, ‘Every scratch has the potential to fester. If we don’t disinfect the wound early, there is a danger of festering and spreading and even death. If we think that the party is 98 percent correct and only 2 percent is wrong, it is a mistake. … “…for the Marxist, in so far as his policy conforms to the profound historical continuities by constantly seeking to influence the course of objective historical development, these efforts can achieve considerable success.” (Chronology)
Months after the politurbo of Socialist Equality Party (SEP) Sri Lanka expelled Comrades Nandana Nanneththi and Sanjaya Jayasekera from the Party, the Party leadership has, on 06 May 2023, released, along with the statement posted below, two other documents in this regard, to the Sinhala section of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS).
We request all workers, all those who are sympathetic to the Party and the International Committee and have progressive interests, to read these documents carefully.
After ‘purging’ these comrades undemocratically and against the principles, the Party bureaucratic regime took every effort to wipe them and the left faction within the Party out from the galaxy of revolutionary internationalist politics. Upon the failure of all such efforts, these desperate steps taken by the leadership in an unhinged manner create an open platform for the defense of Trotskyist principles against the party bureaucracy, which is intensifying the crisis of revolutionary leadership in the working class.
Hence, we are certain that the discussion that starts with this would be very crucial in the development of the class struggle today.
The SEP leadership’s statement only mentions the expulsions of comrades Nandana and Sanjaya. But, it fails to mention that, subsequently, the bureaucracy removed comrade Sunil from Ratmalana, expelled Comrade Migara from Kolonnawa, and dropped Comrade Amaratunga from Ambalangoda Locales. The membership of Comrade Ananda Wakkambura, who participated in the decisive Gotagogama lecture mentioned in the statement, was suspended for the same reason. Earlier, comrade Dimuthu from Gampaha was sacked. Comrade William, who is amongst the most experienced members of the Party, was referred to the local Council of Bandarawela, about 300 km from his residence in Bulathsinhala, in order to isolate him from the Party activities. Furthermore, a number of other comrades from the left faction, which includes comrades Sanjaya and Nandana, are under the threat of expulsion from the Party.
About 20 comrades either left or were expelled during the proximate period before and after the last congress of the Party. This number is a huge percentage for a cadre-based Party. The Party bureaucracy has not made any political evaluation of these developments within the Party, under the conditions in which the workers and youth of Sri Lanka are gaining a revolutionary potential in the midst of the massive resurgence of the class struggle on a global scale.
The Party congresses in 2015 and 2022, which were called suppressing democratic discussion and disregarding the constitution, were postponed for a few months, amid the concerns raised by the members of the left faction, and, due to the intervention of the International Committee (ICFI), who advised that the political issues be resolved through political discussion within the Party. The Party bureaucracy turned their back on this advice. Having done so, there is no legitimacy in their uttering gibberish against Nandana/Sanjaya for violating the democratic centralism of the Party.
The bureaucracy has been careful not to utter a word about the long political struggle these two comrades and the left faction had with the Party bureaucracy, within different Party forums, on various political issues. The bureaucracy worked to distort the meaning of the documents submitted by those comrades and, not bothered to, at least present them to the Party members.
This letter itself, bearing witness to the descent into highly subjective personal vilifications, shows that this bureaucracy is appealing to the backward layers that the party has attracted. This is demonstrating the danger of the Party bureaucracy pushing the movement away from the Party’s working-class base towards reaction and nationalism.
The baseless accusations made for the first time in this article against Comrade Sanjaya’s career are shocking. Does this not nauseatingly expose the mentality which unconsciously led the middle-class stratum of the Party bureaucracy in their relationship with this comrade?
They should explain what kind of international Marxist discipline it is to publish these subjective and nationalist statements in the Sinhala section of WSWS, without any recourse or even a notification to the International Committee.
Exposing these actions of the Party’s unprincipled bureaucracy, we will continue with the discussion in respect of these published articles, and about the struggle led by the left faction of the Party, along with the relevant documents. This short note is a prelude to it.
Our translation of the SEP statement released in Sihalese is published below:
On 12 November 2022, the Sri Lankan branch of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), expelled Nandana Nanneththi and Sanjaya Jayasekera from the party on specific justifiable grounds.
The resolution for their expulsion, passed unanimously at a meeting of the party’s central committee, detailed the indisciplined and politically hostile actions of these two individuals. SEP General Secretary Deepal Jayasekara sent a copy of the central committee resolution informing Sanjaya and Nandana in writing about their expulsion.
The expulsion followed a series of calculated violations of party discipline over months.
Since entering the legal profession, Sanjaya believed that he deserved special treatment within the Socialist Equality Party due to his high social status as a lawyer. He was convinced that his law degree would absolve him of all responsibility for upholding party rules. Sanjaya believed that such rules only affect ordinary party members but not lawyers like him.
From the moment he got his law degree, Sanjaya, held himself in high esteem for his own genius and began to behave in a lofty manner, like an overfed peacock with its tail feathers spread in display.
He saw the party as a vehicle for his personal political ambitions. But to his surprise, the SEP was not intimidated by his professional qualifications. The SEP emphasized that the rules applicable to party membership affect Sanjaya as well as other members. In particular, the SEP leadership warned him that Sanjaya had no “right” to organize his own political meetings without the party’s permission.
In the midst of last year’s mass protests against Rajapaksa, Sanjaya decided to hold his own public meeting and speech at the Galle Face grounds in Colombo. He justified this serious violation of party discipline by stating that the speech was an opportunity “was offered to and arranged for me and only me in my personal capacity and not to the Party”*.
Sanjaya aligned himself with Nandana who had already started publishing public statements on his Facebook page showing his differences with the SEP regarding the party’s programme and perspective on various issues. This practice of Nandana was a violation of party discipline. Nandana refused to retract his public statements despite the SEP leadership clarifying how his views expressed openly on Facebook go against the party’s long-established positions, through internal documents circulated among the party membership.
Taking these anti-party activities to a new high, Nandana published a series of statements on his Facebook page last September, publicly denouncing the party leadership in general and a number of core comrades in particular. Despite the written advice sent to him by the SEP General Secretary asking him to stop such open anti-party activities and to withdraw his public attacks against the party, as per a unanimous decision of the party’s political committee, he continued to make such public criticisms against the party on Facebook and continued his practice.
In all these anti-party activities, Nandana closely and openly collaborated with Sanjaya, maintaining an unprincipled clique relationship. Nandana also participated in the aforementioned public lecture by Sanjaya delivered at Galle Face grounds.
With Nandana and Sanjaya refusing to accept party discipline, the SEP Central Committee was left with no option but to terminate their membership. The party decided not to publicize their expulsion, hoping that they would reconsider their increasingly destructive behavior and refusal to abide by party decisions. But, later this hope proved to be in vain.
Instead, Nandana and Sanjaya have stepped up their open anti-party activities. Treacherously exploiting the SEP’s reluctance to publicly denounce them, they have attempted to create confusion among SEP supporters by presenting themselves to the public as representatives and spokespersons of the International Committee.
The so-called Colombo Action Committee (CAC), which was formed under their initiative, is being used as a means of attacking the SEP by Nandana and Sanjaya. They also claim that the SEP has diverged “sectarianly” from the International Committee/SEP’s call for workers to form their own action committees by refusing to cooperate with CAC.
CAC is not a genuine action committee formed by workers and rural poor. It has nothing to do with the SEP’s call for a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Poor. Through a number of party statements and other articles published on the World Socialist Web Site on Sri Lanka’s political development, the SEP’s call for workers was to form their own action committees in every workplace, factory, farm and neighbourhood, independent of trade unions and capitalist parties. The SEP has also called upon the rural poor to form such action committees in their areas.
In contrast, CAC is a collection of individuals, including some political activists, drawn from different parts of the island. Nandana and Sanjaya are using CAC as a front organization to publicly attack the SEP.
Since their expulsion from the party, Nandana and Sanjaya have used social media to portray themselves as victims of an oppressive party bureaucracy and heroes fighting for personal freedom. Their appeal is aimed at motivating the angry petty-bourgeois and pseudo-leftists who will immediately give approval and publicity to any attack on the International Committee. But this campaign serves to expose how alien they are to the principles and traditions of the movement.The SEP follows the concept of party discipline, clearly defined by James P. Cannon, in an April 1940 resolution adopted by the membership of the Socialist Workers Party of America, at the end of the struggle against the petty-bourgeois minority, led by future Cold-War anti-communist ideologues James Burnham and Max Shattman:
“With party rights, the membership has also certain definite obligations. The theoretical and political character of the party is determined by its program, which forms the lines delimiting the revolutionary party from all other parties, groups and tendencies in the working class. The first obligation of party membership is loyal acceptance of the program of the party and regular affiliation to one of the basic units of the party. The party requires of every member the acceptance of its discipline and the carrying on of his activity in accordance with the program of the party, with the decisions adopted by its conventions, and with the policies formulated and directed by the party leadership.
Party membership implies the obligation of 100% loyalty to the organisation, the rejection of all agents of other, hostile groups in its ranks, and intolerance of divided loyalties in general.”
The resolution further decisively states as follows:
“The rights of each individual member, as set forth above, do not imply that the membership as a whole, namely, the party itself, does not possess rights of its own. The party as a whole has the right to demand that its work be not disrupted and disorganised, and has the right to take all the measures which it finds necessary to assure its regular and normal functioning. The rights of any individual member are distinctly secondary to the rights of the party membership as a whole. Party democracy means not only the most scrupulous protection of the rights of a given minority, but also the protection of the rule of the majority. The party is therefore entitled to organise the discussion and to determine its forms and limits.
The party in general not only has the right, therefore, to organise the discussion in accordance with the requirements of the situation, but the lower units of the party must be given the right, in the interests of the struggle against the disruption and disorganisation of the party’s work, to call irresponsible individuals to order and, if need be, to eject them from the ranks.” (James P. Cannon, The Struggle for a Revolutionary Party)
Sanjaya and Nandana are such irresponsible individuals. In response to their unprincipled actions, the SEP, fittingly, expelled them from their membership.
With this public statement, the SEP is making it clear to the working class that the statements and actions of these two fraudsters are not endorsed by the party and should not be given any recognition.
In addition to this statement, the party also publishes the November 12 SEP Central Committee resolution explaining the reasons for the expulsion of Nandana and Sanjay. We also publish the letter sent by SEP General Secretary to the party members on December 05, 2022, which further elaborates on the political issues.
*For better clarity, the whole paragraph from the relevant 20-paged long self-defensive letter of objection of 15 August 2022, by comrade Sanjaya, against his suspension, addressed to the General Secretary of the SEP, Deepal Jayasekara, is given below:
“The chronological facts aforementioned clearly proves that Comrade Marlon [Secretary of the Locale to which Comrade Sanjaya was attached ] distorts and misrepresents the facts and decisions of the PC and the Locale. It was not “an opportunity for a party member” to “deliver a public lecture at Gota Go Gama”, as comrade Marlon states in the letter, but was an opportunity I myself got with the help of Comrade Wakkumbura, through my contacts who conducted Public University of GotaGoGama. The lecture was offered to and arranged for me and only me in my personal capacity and not to the Party. The distortions made in the rest of the letter are quite obvious when compared with the correspondence laid down above.”
This May Day is celebrated by the working class all over the world, in the midst of the great danger of an emerging World War III – a nuclear war threatening a mass extinction – and the counter attack of the international working class fighting out the dire conditions imposed by the capitalist class rule all over the world.
The super rich elite is endeavoring to cope with the contradictions of their own world order with catastrophic consequences.
They have no choices left, other than continuing their drive towards war and destruction. Over last three decades, US imperialism was continuously waging aggressive wars in the middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe, without an exception of even a single day. May it be in Balkan Peninsula, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Syria, they had their own reasons to kill innocent civilians and had bogus justifications, which they were not even bothered to maintain over the years. The proxy war launched by the NATO against Russia in Ukraine is threatening a nuclear war and mass extinction. US provocations against China has been increased recently with senior US officials openly declaring that a military conflict with China is inevitable.
After three quarter centuries of the defeat of Nazism, the working class is confronted with the danger of fascism, which is showing its ugly face again over Europe, America and many parts of the world. The main capitalist parties are competing with each other in proving their fascistic potentials and trying to impress the ultra-rightist chauvinistic elements in the society. Democratic rights are being suppressed and the so-called ‘saviors of democracy’ are openly defending its ultimate violations.
The international working class is battling the dire consequences of austerity measures which is added to the still bleeding wounds of the Covid-19 pandemic, that has claimed over 21 million lives as of today. The capitalist governments have maintained a criminal recklessness towards the pandemic, and allowed this massive loss of life willingly, for the sake of profits and glory of a tiny layer of individuals, belonging to the elite super-rich. This barbarous attitude was not limited to Covid-19, but was common towards the lives of the poor, and towards war.
In Sri Lanka, it is a common knowledge that there is a pathetic scarcity in some critical medicines, for number of critical illnesses. But, this is not a phenomenon limited to Sri Lanka, or the ‘developing’ countries, but even the most powerful nations of the world are also going through the same fate. According to the Director of the division of molecular imaging and therapeutics at the University of Alabama, Jonathan McConathy, even in US, “People,” are going to “die from this shortage, for sure” (reported in World Socialist Web Site on 26 April 2023)
Whilst imperialism is moving towards a catastrophic nuclear war and suppressing the democratic rights, the international working class has been steadily moving towards counter action. The following quote from David North describes this phenomenon vividly:
“During the past decade there has been a steady escalation of the class struggle. A striking characteristic of the class struggle has been its international character. The revolutionary advances in communications technology are dissolving the barriers between the workers of different countries. Regardless of where it begins, the social conflict in any particular country almost immediately acquires an international audience and becomes a world event. Even the age-old barrier of language is being overcome by the application of translation and transcription programs that make documents and speeches, regardless of the languages in which they were written and spoken, easily comprehensible to a global audience.” (WSWS, 08 April 2023)
Accordingly, the working class is responding to the attacks of the ruling classes, surpassing the national boundaries. They are armed with new developments of communication technologies and, challenging the prevailing world order of national governments and global economy. The capitalist profit system and imperialism are directly obstructing the development of technology, science, culture and human development, dividing people over their nationality, race, religion and skin colour. What is essentially required is their unavoidable organizational tool, which unites them independently, against the capitalist class and all of its agents promoting politics of class collaboration among the workers to misguide them against the vicious attacks the capitalist class is preparing for them.
The Colombo Action Committee is calling workers all over the country and around the globe, to build organizations of their own independent action committees (rank-and-file-committees) to counter the vicious attack of imperialism –the world order of the super-rich and financial oligarchy – to discuss, debate and fight for their own solution to the ongoing social crisis of starvation, death and destruction.
Commemorating the May Day 2023, we call upon our class brothers and sisters in the country and around the world to rise, build their own independent rank-and-file-committees, factory and neighborhood committees, to discuss the actions and programs of countering the capitalist attacks on them as well as the drive towards the world war, and to unite with their international comrades to build the International Workes’ Alliance of Rank-and-File-Committees (IWA-RFC) against these attacks.
We fully support and stand together with the call of the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Forth International (ICFI) to build such an alliance and, insist the Sri Lankan branch of the ICFI, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), to respond our request for unity and common action, in convening the Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and the Rural Masses (DSC).
The letter published here was sent by the Colombo Action Committee to the General Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), Comrade Deepal Jayasekara and the editor of the Sinhala section of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), Comrade Ratnayake on March 22, 2023. It has been irresponsibly ignored by those comrades.
This leadership has even rejected the interventions made by the Colombo Action Committee (CAC), in defense of the SEP’s democratic rights, against the attacks on the party on two previous occasions. Despite the above rejection, CAC, which regarded these attacks on the party members by the trade union leaders in front of the Fort railway station and on the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) and SEP comrades at Sri Jayewardenepura University, with the graveness they deserved, campaigned against the attacks by distributing leaflets among the workers and students. This is because the CAC has always been based on working class revolutionary principles.
CAC was built in the struggle for the perspectives presented by the Socialist Equality Party on July 20, 2022 during the mass movement that unfolded from April 2022. That perspective leaves no room for this kind of sectarianism. Sectarianism is a sign of no confidence in the working class. Action Committees are not formed by mere inducement of any party or organization. These committees, as an objective necessity of the masses, should be built by engaging in struggle within the struggle of the workers and the oppressed. Nothing could be won without uniting a mass movement of action committees. For that, the widest democratic discussion within and among the action committees is extremely decisive. Those who do not believe in these principles, bureaucratically announce Action Committees and expect workers to join them. This is an illusion. They have forgotten that the language of the worker is the struggle.
We hope this letter will attract the attention of workers and other anti-capitalist masses. We do so just because it leads to a necessary discussion on the building of a mass movement against capitalism.
General Secretary
Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka), and
Chief Editor
World Socialist Web Site (Sri Lanka)
22 March 2023
Comrades,
Re. the “Joint Statement” of the Action Committees of Sri Lanka
We write this letter to inform you that the statement published on the Sinhala section of the World Socialist Web Site on 14 March 2023, calling for a “united struggle against the government’s austerity measures”, was discussed by the Colombo Action Committee (CACPS) and to convey the conclusions made.
CACPS is committed to providing full active support to the said call.
The plan to organize the working class outside the trade unions, which are a major obstacle to a united struggle, is a critical class requirement.
The governments and the ruling classes of all countries cannot tolerate parliamentary democracy too, any longer. The Sri Lankan government has already proven, time and again, by ignoring even its own superior court orders and relentlessly attacking public agitations and protests, that there is nothing left of the relatively peaceful coexistence.
Under these conditions, workers’ action committees have become a condition of the very survival of the working class. They must be built and they can be built.
The CACPS was built upon the SEP-SL Statement dated 21 July 2022, after a long series of discussions. In establishing the CACPS, we studied in depth the lessons of the relevant history and the programme that is being implemented in the Auto Industry and in a number of other sectors with the support and guidance of the Socialist Equality Party of the United States. It arose out of the conscious intervention into the intense class struggles that developed in Sri Lanka from April 2022.
We understand that the results of the CACPS campaigns for this programme among the anti-capitalist, working class and oppressed middle class groups are not the fruits of just CACPS’s work. The intensity of the class struggle and the necessary guidance provided by the training gained from the long-term theoretical political work of the International Committee and its Sri Lanka section led to it. All those who joined the CACPS at its inception were aware of and respected the struggle of the party.
It is with great regret that we have to remind you that every effort made by our committee to work in open solidarity with the struggle of the SEP has been arbitrarily thwarted by you. This time too, you have consciously worked to keep CACPS out, when issuing the joint statement of the action committees. What you have done thereby is to confirm that the assurance that you proclaimed in the said joint statement that “we are ready to give you our utmost support to form your own action committees” is also fake.
As soon as the Fisherfolk Action Committee of the Kytes Island in the North was established, we extended our arms of brotherhood and sent a congratulatory message to that committee. By refusing to publish it on the world socialist web site, you also rejected your proclaimed invitation made in your statement calling for a Democratic and Socialist Congress of the workers and rural masses.
We believe that you have the honest intention to build Committees of Action. But the policies you are following are contrary to that need. Especially, while distancing the CACPS, which has already demonstrated its capability to fight very actively and firmly based on principles, you have chosen to refer in your statement to non-existent action committees and to ones that are still on the drawing boards but have not yet been built, and also have named loose relationships as action committees. It appears that, while deceiving yourselves, you think that mentioning the names of such fake action committees would serve as a ploy to win over workers. You simply think that it is not a political crime because it would help foster the revolution against capitalism. This approach is wrong. According to Trotsky, it is a bureaucratic maneuver. Action committees can be formed primarily when the (working) class feels the need for such a new tool. Objectively, it is now an essential requirement for the workers.
But, it is not possible to be convinced of and convince what the workers need, without intervening in the struggle. You missed that opportunity in the mass struggle that spread since last April. Your claim in the above statement about the non-existing action committees “being part” of the mass uprising involving millions of workers and rural people is false to the core. You knowingly fell into the trap of the hypocritical movement led by reactionary gangs and parties that, “political parties are prohibited”, by declaring bombastically , “even if others come without names, we will come only with the name, not otherwise”, and thereby missed the opportunity to intervene among the masses.
In behaving so, you allowed the right-wing and pseudo-left to exploit the public anger and discontent at their own will and, thereby, you have betrayed the workers, oppressed youth, students and the urban and rural poor to these reactionary tendencies. You did not appreciate the strength of the party’s glorious history and the opportunity it was presented. We have realized that, today, your move to present fake action committees as real ones, instead of fighting to build genuine action committees, is the necessary consequence of these evasions. The forerunners of the Colombo Action Committee intervened in order not to let the opportunity presented by the class struggle go wasted, intending to minimize, to the extent possible, the damage caused by your sectarian policy.
What is needed is not to stop at just blaming the pseudo-left, but to develop programmes and take actions against the programmes and actions of the pseudo-left. Instead, you call action committees a tactical tool for party recruitment, robbing the space for real action committees to emerge, and thereby create the conditions that prevent the growth of a broad mass movement. On top of the fact that this is a tactic of lying, it is a theoretical deviation and weakens the struggle for real action committees.
However, we know that late party General Secretary, Comrade Wijay Dias, who opposed the suggestion of a section of the political committee that action committees should be formed only with the workers who have accepted the party’s perspective, questioned, if so, why not they be recruited directly into the party, rather than form action committees.
The problem is that, instead of developing the struggle within the working class for the perspective needed to build workers’ action committees, you look for easy tricks. As we know very well, teacher groups that would have participated in the formation of action committees soon abandoned them because of these factors. The Action Committee for the Defence of freedom of Art and Expression, which was functioning successfully, was subjected to natural death by not convening meetings and not holding elections for officer bearers. This is a criminal omission.
History punishes missed opportunities. If we do not correct mistakes as soon as possible and prevent omissions, we will be responsible for a historical mistake. Once again, we request that you find a way to work together to speedup and efficiently build a Democratic and Socialist Congress of action committees for the sake of essential and decisive unity of the working class. Let us also mention that CACPS is not sectarian and will not give up the struggle to build the Congress for any reason whatsoever. We hope for a prompt response.
