Sri Lanka’s ruling Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) is campaigning for the May 6 local government elections on the basis of lies, hypocrisy and false promises.
The election is being held seven months after JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake won the presidency and five months after his JVP/NPP swept to power with a two-thirds parliamentary majority in November. Dissanayake and his JVP/NPP were able to exploit the deep-seated mass opposition to the traditional ruling parties—former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party and its offshoot, Samagi Jana Balawegaya, and the Rajapakse family’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna.
From day one, Dissanayake began implementing the vicious International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity measures begun under the Wickremesinghe government, completely reversing election promises that he would renegotiate the terms of the IMF bailout loan and provide economic relief to the masses.
The JVP/NPP’s pro-IMF measures have led to rising anger among workers, farmers, students and the poor. While the trade union bureaucracies are desperately attempting to contain and halt this opposition, protests have erupted among university students, health and postal workers and School Development officers.
Dissanayake and the JVP/NPP are hoping to take advantage of the political disarray of the opposition parties, which were humiliated in the last elections and also support the IMF demands.
Although results of this election will not affect the ruling JVP/NPP’s parliamentary majority, it wants to be able to claim a renewed mandate in order to accelerate the imposition of IMF-dictated austerity.
Winning the local elections is “very important to successfully advancing the country’s efforts to change the political culture,” JVP general secretary Tilvin Silva told a March 21 press conference. “If the power of the LGs [local governments] goes to another group, ‘opponents’ would sabotage the government’s work,” he said.
Having fully embraced the IMF’s agenda, however, there are no political “opponents” in the establishment parties that would sabotage the government’s work. Demagogic criticism of the government from the parliamentary opposition and their allies is utterly bogus and designed to hoodwink the masses.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has taken charge of the JVP/NPP election campaign, speaking at election rallies in different areas.
Significantly, however, neither Dissanayake, Silva nor other JVP/NPP speakers utter the word “IMF” at public rallies, but at big business forums, they repeat the constant refrain—the IMF program is the only alternative to ensure the country’s “economic recovery.”
Addressing a March 30 event in Deiyandara, in the southern Matara district, Dissanayake declared that the people had moved the country towards a “new path” by creating the “strongest parliament” in its history.
His government’s “big change,” he declared, was to “assert the freedom of citizens” by creating an environment in which “the government worker, the investor and businessman—can all work freely.”
What cynicism! Dissanayake’s regime has dumped its pre-election promises to reduce the value added tax (VAT) and maintains the 18 percent VAT on fuel, goods and services as well as a special commodity levy on 64 essentials, including basic food items. While many families cannot afford three meals a day, the government maintains a low-tax regime for corporations and investors.
The JVP/NPP budget proposed the establishment of a State Holding Company to carry through the massive restructuring of more than 400 state-owned enterprises (SOEs). This will pave the way for closures, increased public-private ownership and full-scale privatisations, destroying half a million jobs and providing further lucrative opportunities for international investors to exploit the island’s workers and resources.
Following his election, Dissanayake promised big business that he would not grant any “reckless” salary increases for state employees. He has kept his word! His budget included a minor increase of 8,250 rupees—over a three-year period—for the lowest grade of state employees, with small variations to higher grades. At the same time, Dissanayake has slashed overtime payments and other allowances, provoking widespread anger among workers.
Dissanayake told the Deiyandara rally that his government had attracted international investors, after a five-year decline, and that this was a “sign of economic stability.” In other words, the government has created favourable conditions for foreign investors and a tiny layer of rapacious local capitalists at the expense of working people.
Dissanayake told the meeting—mostly local farmers—that the government had allocated 3 billion rupees to resume the cultivation of abandoned paddy fields in the Matara district, and then promoted the latest meagre budget increase in social welfare.
These limited allocations, however, will not alleviate the harsh poverty facing the rural poor, who are mired in debt, exploited by middlemen, and struggling with the increased cost of agricultural inputs. The poverty-stricken layers of the population—conservatively estimated at 5.5 million people—mostly live in the island’s rural areas and plantations.
“Ours is a government, which doesn’t waste a cent from the wealth of the masses… which gives every cent coming to the treasury back to the people… doing every project thinking about the welfare of the people,” Dissanayake said.
Dissanayake declared in the same breadth: “We have to resume repayment of [foreign] loans from 2028 and must generate the necessary dollars for that. We will create an economy so that we will be able to repay these loans properly.”
This is the real agenda behind Dissanayake’s election bluster and lies.
The JVP/NPP government will wage class war against the working class to ensure the resumption of international loan repayments—halted by the previous Rajapakse government in April 2022 amid a foreign exchange crisis and economic collapse—and greater profits for capitalist investors.
Acutely conscious of the growing mass discontent over their repudiation of election promises, Dissanayake and the JVP/NPP leaders claim they are fighting corruption. During last year’s elections, the JVP/NPP blamed the country’s economic crisis on fraud, corruption and waste.
In recent weeks, the government has initiated arrest warrants and filed cases against former ministers, MPs and state bureaucrats. It has also cut some allowances and perks of ex-presidents, ministers and MPs. The JVP/NPP’s claim to be creating a “corruption free” country is a cruel joke since it defends to the hilt the capitalist system, the root cause of fraud and corruption.
In its October 12 election statement last year, the Socialist Equality Party stated: “The SEP issues an emphatic warning to all workers and rural toilers: Don’t allow yourselves to be duped twice! Dissanayake will prove no different than [President Gotabhaya] Rajapakse and [President Ranil] Wickremesinghe.” This warning has been conclusively proven over the past six months.
Working people must reject Dissanayake’s phony rhetoric and seriously prepare to fight the government’s austerity agenda. Amid the worsening global economic turmoil, intensified by fascist US President Trump and his aggressive trade war, this task is even more urgent. The US and other imperialist powers are plunging the world towards a catastrophic Third World War.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP), the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, is intervening in the local government elections to campaign for a socialist and international perspective and is calling for the independent mobilisation of the working class, students and youth to fight for this program.
We are contesting the Karainagar Divisional Council in Jaffna district and the Kolonnawa Urban Council in the suburbs of Colombo to fight for the broadest possible discussion of our program. Attend our upcoming public meeting and apply to join and build the SEP as the mass party to lead the revolutionary struggles that lie ahead.