The Sri Lankan parliamentary election on August 17 deserves to be
closely followed. While the events in Greece and the betrayal of Syriza
have been the subject of wide media attention, the political crisis in
Sri Lanka is another acute expression of the breakdown of global
capitalism, which is fueling bitter geo-political rivalries and social
counterrevolution against the working class.
The Socialist
Equality Party (SEP), the Sri Lankan section of the International
Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), is waging an ambitious
campaign, standing 43 candidates in three key electoral districts—the
capital Colombo, Jaffna in the war-torn north of the island, and Nuwara
Eliya in the centre of the country’s extensive tea plantations. The SEP
is the only party fighting for the perspective of socialist
internationalism to unify the working class in the struggle against war,
austerity and attacks on democratic rights.
Sri Lanka, which sits
astride vital sea lanes, is a focus of the US “pivot to Asia” and its
preparations for war against China. The United States, along with India,
was deeply involved behind-the-scenes in the ouster of Mahinda
Rajapakse as president in the January 8 presidential election.
Rajapakse’s “crime,” as far as Washington and New Delhi were concerned,
was not his autocratic methods of rule or the atrocities for which his
government was responsible in the final stages of the communal war
against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), but his
close ties with Beijing.
The regime-change operation engineered by
Washington, in league with former President Chandrika Kumaratunga and
the pro-US United National Party (UNP), resulted in the installation of
Maithripala Sirisena as president. Various middle-class liberal groups
and pseudo-left organisations played the critical role in dressing up
Sirisena, who as Rajapakse’s health minister was just as culpable for
all of the government’s crimes, as a champion of democracy. The SEP
alone exposed this fraud and warned the working class that Sirisena
would be just as ruthless as Rajapakse in imposing the agenda of big
business.
Since January, Sri Lanka has rapidly been drawn into
Washington’s “pivot to Asia” against Beijing. Following the election, a
string of high-level US administration and military figures made a
beeline for Colombo, culminating in the visit of US Secretary of State
John Kerry in May. He called for “an annual partnership dialogue” and
identified the importance of Sri Lanka’s “strategic location near
deep-water ports in India and Myanmar,” which could enable it to “serve
as the fulcrum of a modern and dynamic Indo-Pacific region.” A crucial
aspect of the Pentagon’s war planning against Beijing is the ability to
disrupt China’s shipping routes across the Indian Ocean to supplies of
energy and raw materials in Africa and the Middle East.
Sirisena
came to power promising to improve living standards and guarantee
democratic rights—all within a whirlwind 100 days—after which he would
call a parliamentary election. However, these plans quickly went awry
amid a worsening international economic breakdown and, as in Greece,
draconian austerity demands from the representatives of global finance
capital. Burdened with a growing debt, the Sri Lankan economy is
teetering on the brink of a balance-of-payments crisis. In March, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) flatly rejected Colombo’s request for a
$4 billion loan, demanding greater budget cutbacks and, in effect, a
reversal of the government’s very limited handouts.
Sirisena has
already broken many of his “100 days” pledges, delaying loan increases
for students and providing only part of the promised pay increase for
public-sector workers. Private-sector employees have received no wage
increase despite prices for essential food items soaring by up to 20
percent.
As the SEP warned, the “democrat” Sirisena has not
hesitated to mobilise the security forces to suppress the growing
resistance in the working class. The government has deployed the army as
strike-breakers against health workers, used the police against
protesting students, and backed the victimisation of plantation strike
leaders.
The current election campaign takes place under
conditions of acute political crisis in Colombo and deep fractures
within the ruling elite. The two contenders in the January presidential
election are both members of the opposition Sri Lanka Freedom Party
(SLFP), and Sirisena, by virtue of being the country’s president, is
also nominal party head. However, rising public hostility towards the
government has emboldened Rajapakse and his supporters to take control
of the party’s election campaign and promote the ousted president as the
next prime minister. In so doing, Rajapakse is resorting to the
stock-in-trade of Colombo politicians, whipping up anti-Tamil chauvinism
and fears of an LTTE revival.
The prospect of Rajapakse returning
to power has already triggered alarm bells in Washington and New Delhi,
which will not tolerate Colombo’s resumption of close ties with
Beijing. The announcement that Rajapakse would run in the election was
greeted by a storm of criticism from Sri Lankan liberal and pseudo-left
organisations. Those that denounced the “fascist Rajapakse dictatorship”
in January have not hesitated to demand that Sirisena use his
autocratic presidential powers to block Rajapakse’s return to power.
Sirisena
has already announced that he will not appoint Rajapakse as prime
minister even if the SLFP and its allies win a majority in the August 17
election. Such a flagrantly unconstitutional action could only be
enforced through the establishment of an autocratic regime backed by the
military.
In Greece, the pseudo-left in power—the Syriza
government—carried out a monumental betrayal of the working class. In
Sri Lanka, the pseudo-left organisations—the Nava Sama Samaja Party
(NSSP), the United Socialist Party (USP) and the Frontline Socialist
Party (USP)—have been the cheerleaders for Sirisena and the right-wing,
pro-American UNP. Their integration into ruling circles is underscored
by the appointment of NSSP leader Wickremabahu Karunaratne to the
13-member National Executive Council (NEC)—the top government advisory
body overseeing policy implementation—where he functions as the regime’s
apologist in chief.
Despite sharp differences in foreign policy
orientation, whichever parties form the next government will rapidly
drop their election promises as they proceed to impose the IMF’s
austerity demands. The gulf between the needs and aspirations of the
working class and the entire political establishment is an expression of
the immense social divide between rich and poor and the
irreconcilability of sharpening class antagonisms.
The SEP is
alone in advancing a revolutionary socialist program against war,
austerity and attacks on democratic rights in opposition to both the
Sirisena and Rajapakse camps of the ruling class. Sri Lanka is being
inexorably drawn into the maelstrom of geo-political rivalry and
conflict—a process that can be opposed only on the basis of an
internationalist perspective aimed at uniting workers on the island with
their class brothers and sisters throughout the Indian subcontinent and
globally to abolish capitalism, which is the root cause of war.
The
SEP is the only party capable of uniting workers across ethnic lines.
It has waged an intransigent political struggle against all forms of
nationalism and communalism and mounted an unswerving and principled
opposition to the protracted war waged by successive Colombo governments
against the democratic rights of the Tamil minority. The SEP fights for
a Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and Eelam as part of the struggle for
socialism throughout South Asia and internationally. It deserves the
support of workers and young people around the world. (Peter Symonds)
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