english

By Colombo Action Committee

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.

Fraternally ,

Shantha
Wijesuriya, Secretary,

Sanjay
Jayasekera,
Chairperson,                                       

Colombo Action
Committee for People’s Struggles.

Colombo Action Committee.

By Sanjaya Jayasekera.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved on Monday (20) the 48‑month extended arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) with an amount of SDR 2.286 billion [395 percent of quota or about US$3 billion. The Special Drawing Rights (SDR) is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement its member countries’ official reserves] to ‘support Sri Lanka’s economic policies and reforms’, in a bid to bail out the ailing Sri Lankan capitalist economy.

As in the previous 16 occasions of such arrangements made with the international financier, the disbursement of the fund will be made in tranches within a period of four years, during which the Sri Lankan Government will be overseen as to its progress in implementing IMF austerity and its pro-market dictates. 

In the IMF statement issued on Monday, it  states, “[t]he objectives of the EFF-supported program are to restore macroeconomic stability and debt sustainability, safeguarding financial stability, and stepping up structural reforms to unlock Sri Lanka’s growth potential.”

In more clearer terms , the IMF head, Kristalina Georgieva stated what these in fact means:  “Ambitious revenue-based fiscal consolidation is necessary for restoring fiscal and debt sustainability“, and that “[i]n this regard, the momentum of ongoing progressive tax reforms should be maintained”. She said, “[f]or the fiscal adjustments to be successful, sustained fiscal institutional reforms on tax administration, public financial and expenditure management, and energy pricing are critical.”

In concrete terms these reforms refer to extensive economic restructuring that opens domestic production and service markets to international investors, unhindered labour exploitation, painful austerity, privatization, more tax and price hikes.

Waiting for this approval, since his appointment as the President of the country, Ranil Wickremasinghe has been preparing the grounds at home, implementing harsh austerity measures dictated by the IMF on the one hand and, unleashing anti-democratic witch-hunt and military-police repression against protesting workers and youth on the other hand. 

These attacks started with brutal dispersal of the ‘Aragalaya’ protesters last year from the protest site at Galle Face Greens, and continued with arrests and prosecution in courts.  Several times, Wickremasinghe declared no protests that will hamper his economic restructuring programme including subsidy and welfare cuts, privatization and commercialization of state owned enterprises, tax hikes and increasing the prices of  fuel and services such as electricity, water and telecommunication, will be tolerated.

Wickremasinghe, refused by his electorate and having no popular mandate, was appointed first as prime minister by former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa weeks before he was ousted by popular protests, and then, in last July, was ascended to the executive presidency in an in-house operation of the type of a constitutional coup against the people, chosen by members of parliament who were highly deplored and refused by the masses. 

Wickremasinghe declared recently in parliament that his government has put in place all the fifteen recommendations of the IMF to get the approval for the fund facility.

By April last year, the economy was hard hit by a depleted foreign reserve crisis that prevented import of essential consumer items including fuel, and by a balance of payment crisis which had forced exorbitant excessive money printing to compensate for the loss of government tax revenue, which caused high inflation and a severe recession. The crisis was aggravated by loss of foreign remittances and tourism earnings and export drops due to COVID-19 and, then by the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine from February 2022. The country declared historic bankruptcy in mid April, in respect of its bilateral sovereign loans. 

Established in 1947 by the Bretton Woods Agreement, as part of the post-war financial order dominated by US imperialism, restoring the economis devastated by the war, the IMF is now the global agent of the international capital, overseeing the operations of the open market economies particularly of the so-called developing and emerging countries, guiding, dictating the respective governments and ensuring that the rich resources and the cheap labour platforms in these countries are placed open for free and unrestrained exploitation by the International capital.  

With the debt sustainability certificate issued by the IMF with this approval,  the government expects more loans from other financial institutions including the Asian Development Bank. These will add up to the debt burden of the island. 

The government is hell bent on implementing IMF dictated austerity measures continuously against the working people, the lower middle class, the peasants and the urban and rural poor. Last year, during this time, the government was liable to pay a sum of US$ 52 billion as foreign loans, $ 6 billion of debt servicing by the end of the year and $ 25 billion till 2026. 

Now, the government will commence debt servicing, as Wickremasinghe stated that the country would no longer be regarded as ‘bankrupt’ and would  resume normal transactions.

The IMF and the ruling class, including the Governor of the Central Bank who once openly stated it, are well aware that its measures are harsh enough to prompt intense agitation by the working class, and, therefore recommends that “social safety nets should be strengthened and better targeted to the poor” and “protect the most vulnerable“,  referring to shoddy welfare concessions, in a bid to preempt  class struggles. Its concern about the poor or  “the most vulnerable” is a sham. 

Soon after the IMF approval was declared,  Wickremesinghe confirmed his commitment to abide by IMF dictates: “we look to get the economy back on track for the long term through prudent fiscal management and our ambitious reform agenda“. 

Just the previous day, his cabinet approved divestment of the two state owned enterprises, Sri Lanka Telecom and Lanka Hospitals Corporation. 

All the trade unions in Sri Lanka supported the IMF programme and some were vociferous, particularly those controlled by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). These official labour organizations that once pretended to safeguard the interests of the working class have shown their utter bankruptcy and organic inability even to pressure governments and gain the petty concessions, and have openly become the mediators between the state, the companies and the workers, betraying one struggle after the other. 

Various middle-class, privileges-oriented, fake left organizations such as FrontLine Socialist Party and Inter University Student Federation, which are hostile to any independant working class mobilization against the capitalist state and for political power, have been fixing political traps of class collaboration and clean parliamentarianism as the way to democracy and economic recovery. 

All these parties have above all taken the working class as their hostages, preventing them from taking matters into their own hands and waging a revolutionary fight against international finance capital and their agents in the capitalist state, in order to reorganize society on socialist lines.

The working class cannot prevent the Wickremasinghe government or any of his successors continuing with these class war measures and social counter revolution without arming themselves independently of these traditional organizations and joining their hands with international class brothers and sisters who face similar cuts and living conditions throughout the planet. 

Workers of all tiers and industries, urban and rural,  rallying peasants and youth, need to build their own action committees to unite these struggles ahead, cutting across petty ethnic divisions. 

Leading the masses under that perspective, the Colombo Action Committee has called upon workers and the oppressed to join this fight, organize themselves and decide to determine their destinies themselves. 

#CACPS #theSocialistLK

Image of IMF courtesy of Reuters

Colombo Action Committee

Yesterday (15) public sector workers and professionals including doctors across the island went on strike and protested against the government’s new tax levy, interest rate hike and electricity tariff hike and other attacks.  Thousands of public office workers, including teachers, participated in demonstrations and picket campaigns even in distant towns like Badulla, Mahiyangana, and Monaragala. The Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation employees applied for half a day leave and held a picket in the center of the city.

Electricity and postal workers did not work. Schools were closed and in many places the scheduled term tests had to be postponed. Most of the state-owned banks were inactive. Due to the train drivers’ strike, only 11 or so of the scheduled 400 trains could run, 20 according to the Presidential Media Division. But the department could only muster the services of only the three DIM officers and a few retired drivers on contract basis. The Port Authority’s president, who went to Colombo port to instruct the port workers to call off the strike, was hooted at and chased away by the workers.

Non-academic workers also joined the university teachers’ strike that was launched a few days ago, and the universities became inactive. Employees of Peradeniya University were engaged in picketing at Galaha Junction, shouting slogans and inviting people to join them in winning democratic rights. “This time, no one can stop our fight, we will pledge to protect what we have won, our rights,” they expressed their determination.

The government spokesperson, Transport, Highways, Public Administration and Media Minister Bandula Gunawardena announced the day before, that if the employees engaged in the government services named as “essential services” such as transport, traffic, harbour, port, postal services and  electricity, violate the law of the country by engaging in industrial action, the law will be strictly implemented against them. The workers entered the fight not without the knowledge that they were fighting a government that would use tear gas and baton charges and  would shoot and kill them.

The government, thus, brought political issues into the struggle from the outset. What the workers wanted was a political general strike. But what was called by the trade unions was a simple strike. It was not a conscious struggle where the unions gave space to the workers to express their views.

Not only did the trade unions had no intention to march toward victory in the face of inevitable state repression, the trade unions’ goal was to somehow end the struggle. A prominent leader of trade unions controlled by People’s Liberation Front (JVP), K. D. Lal Kantha clearly said in a meeting held in Colombo on the 13th with the participation of trade unions and other organizations under the title  ” Oppressive Tax Revision and the country’s tomorrow”: “We fully support the strike on the 15th. We are not ready at this moment for the talk about a continuous strike.”

Ranjan Jayalal, another trade union leader in the JVP leadership, also said, about the restructuring of the Electricity Board, that “Even though the Minister (for Electricity)… did not talk about the restructuring so far (with us), he said that he will talk to us even daily, monthly, week to week from now on. We agree with that. The minister said that he will not sell. Therefore, there is no need to go to a conflict.”

Other unions too have reasons not to go into conflict. The Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA), which started a strike on Monday 13th,  saying that it will go on a continuous strike until the demands are met, yesterday gave up the strike saying it is temporary and forwarded  ‘reasons’ for the same. They have issued a press release based on a written promise they claimed has been made by the government. Accordingly, 1) the government’s desire to continue discussing alternative proposals was announced. 2) From March 20, 2023, the implementation of the International Monetary Fund’s proposals will begin and the government has indicated its   agreement to implement amendments to the tax. 3) The willingness of the government to provide an opportunity for trade unions to negotiate directly with the International Monetary Fund for tax amendments has been indicated. 4) presentations have been  made about the possibility of giving a special allowance to the government employees in the last quarter of 2023 taking into account the  state fiscal trends.

In the end, the medical union says, “The GMOA’s executive council, which considered the indications  given to us through the letter, decided to temporarily stop, at 8 tomorrow morning,  the continuous trade union action that had been planned”

It is already clear that the trade unions have no capacity whatsoever to lead a struggle against the attacks of the Wickremesinghe government. If they have any concern, that is to give way to the current government’s policy of placing the entire burden of the crisis on the working people, without harming the trade union bureaucracy and the privileged such.

Trade unions are organically unable to drive a general strike in the strict political sense. Yesterday’s rail strike is a notable example. The drivers went on strike. Unions of station masters, guards, clerks, and other railway workers did not support it. There are many types of unions. They represent the interests of different capitalist parties or groups. It is a historical fact that in the end they are unanimous only in the case of the betrayal of the struggles of the working class.

This time too, leaving alone  winning the demands, the unions signaled to the government in advance, by calling a one-day strike, that it should not be afraid of. Shouting of a ‘continuous strike if the demands are not met’ is part of the game of throwing sand in the eyes of the workers, with the mutual understanding of the ruling class.

That is why the Colombo Action Committee (CACPS) stands for the organization of the real people’s movement to defeat the capitalist attacks by building worker-peasant action committees in every workplace, neighborhood area. The right to take decisions should be in the hands of those committees. A joint struggle for a program that represents the interests of the oppressed people of the entire island should be taken forward by a conference of their representatives.

16 March 2023

*This statement was originally published in Sinhalese on 16 March 2023

@NN #CACPS #theSocialistLK

Addressing in a ceremony held yesterday (19) at Rantambe National Cadet Training Centre for the awarding ‘Colours’ to the National Cadet Corps, President Ranil Wickremesinghe has stated, “to take on the future requires discipline and commitment”. 

“The people needed for the country’s future are trained by this Cadet Corps”, he has stated. 

“Today the Cadet Corps operates in many schools…Cadet Corps should be established in every Central College. We must continue to develop this further. I believe that this will produce the disciplined citizens that this country needs.”

He has further stated, “we must build both a strong economy and a new society for the benefit of the country’s youth. To build such a new social system, a disciplined leadership is required. I am hopeful that the Cadet Corps will provide the required leadership.”

These statements are clear. What discipline does  Wickremesinghe mean?

Military discipline. Who should be disciplined? The youth and the students. The cops who have received military training and thereby having received military discipline, he says, are “the people needed for the country’s future”.

The militarization of the society is so promoted and government schools are to be used to “produce the disciplined citizens”  whom, according to Wickremesinghe, “this country needs”.

This call goes in line with and appeases ultra-nationalist elements who have repeatedly advocated military training for all youth in the country. Racist monk Athuraliye Rathana was recently vociferous in this regard.

These plans echo those of ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksha who, in 2020, declared  a Presidential Task Force, comprised entitely of military, intelligence and  police officers,  to build a ‘secure country, disciplined, virtuous and lawful society’, aimed at suppressing political dissent.

Wickremesinghe’s plan – the conspiracies of the ruling class of the country, and to that matter in any other capitalist State – is for the military trained corps and military personnel  to provide the required “disciplined leadership” to build a “strong economy and a new society”. 

This strong economy, Wickremesinghe has been so clear, is the pro-imperialist, neoliberal economy discharging all dictates of the international financial capital, including IMF, the World Bank and the WTO.

He has already stated that democracy is subject to a strong economy and therefore elections should be postponed. Such an anti-democratic governance should be subjected to military training and discipline, and the nationalist indoctrination propaganda machine should be operated. 

The independence day celebrations, the Kandy Janaraja Perahera and similar nationalist propaganda are aimed at fortifying nationalist sentiments in order to prepare an army of ultra-nationalist and racist regiments against the working class, youth and student protest movements that Wickremesinghe has taken oaths to ruthlessly crush.  

Wickremesinghe is warning that students and youth should be “disciplined” and commit to his programme of  “strong economy and a new society”, or else meet military, police repression.

Wickremasinghe confirmed this approach toward the new generation of youth who wants a “system change” that they should succumb to his plan for the society and economy. In addressing a group of young people – who have no representation in any of the left-wing youth fronts who are politically active in the country-  on 16 February, Wickremesinghe conveyed that youth should bow down to his austerity programme to “develop” the country by 2048 and that the working people and the oppressed should be ready to “pay” for “the past sins” that they have committed. 

Wickremesinghe’s reference to the “past sins” is to mean the limited social welfare programs, free education and healthcare and subsidies that the labor movement of the country and world won over a period of more than a century especially during the post-WWII period. Capitalism cannot afford any of these concessionary welfare anymore. 

Wickremesinghe has been issuing these statements often taking much time to emphasize and to be very clear that suppression of dissent and opposition to his pro-market programmes would be his only response. He is well aware that his and his parasitic clique’s rule is weak, and an enormous resentment is growing within the entire population of the working people and the oppressed, which would pose an existential threat to the capitalist establishment, unless the same is contained by the Corporate-State-Union alliance. The specter of class struggles haunts the ruling class, and Wickremesinghe is shooting desperate threats. 

Sanjaya Jayasekera

Colombo Action Committee 

20 February 2023

#CACPS