The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka are holding an online public meeting this coming Sunday entitled “Oppose Sri Lankan President’s scuttling of local elections!”
The meeting will mainly focus on the unprecedented attack on the democratic right to vote by President Wickremesinghe who last week cancelled the scheduled March 9 local government elections.
Wickremesinghe’s autocratic actions are a part of his government’s broader attacks on the democratic rights of the masses and another step towards dictatorial forms of rule. The government fears the rising wave of working class struggles against the savage austerity measures ordered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) as well as the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and its National People’s Power are fraudulently posing as defenders of democratic rights. Both parties, as well as other fringe groups, have only tactical difference with the Wickremesinghe regime and support the IMF austerity measures. The JVP has a long record of backing government attacks on democratic rights, while SJB leaders were, until recently, members of Wickremesinghe’s right-wing United National Party.
The opposition parties, the trade unions and pseudo-left groups were complicit in the ruling class conspiracy to install Wickremesinghe as president after former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse was forced to flee the country, following the eruption of mass protests in April–July last year.
The SEP and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality is calling for the independent mobilisation of the working class through the formation of action committees to defend all democratic and social rights and take up the fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government on an international socialist program. We also call for the building action committees in rural areas to rally rural poor in this struggle.
The SEP has initiated a campaign for a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses, based on delegates democratically elected by these action committees to unite the working class and rural toilers in this struggle.
Workers, youth and the poor need to fight for this perspective in order to defeat Wickremesinghe’s repressive measures. The response of the ruling elites internationally to a rising upsurge of working-class action, a deepening economic crisis and the ongoing catastrophic war in Ukraine in Russia, is to turn to dictatorial and fascistic methods.
Our meeting will discuss the international socialist strategy required to confront this danger. We invite workers, students, young people and the oppressed masses to attend this online meeting.