On 4 February, Sri Lanka celebrated its 75th anniversary of independence. The day was marked by protests and rallies by Tamils to demand an end to the military occupation of their land, as they consider it as “black day”. 75 years after independence the national question is far from solved and led to a bloody civil war that ended in 2009 with a bloodbath against the Tamil population and an ongoing military occupation of the North and the East since. The cost of the celebration in the south was drastically reduced as otherwise it could have been seen as a provocation by the population that has been raging in recent months.
By Serge Jordan, ISA, first published in Offensiv, weekly paper of ISA in Sweden
Relative calm seems to prevail in Sri Lanka, after a year that saw the country’s worst economic collapse since independence and a dramatic entry of the masses into the arena of struggle, culminating in the spectacular overthrow of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July following the revolutionary storming of his Presidential Palace. But underneath the surface, social ferment is building up, as none of the root causes of the crisis have been addressed, and people’s economic sufferings are bound to worsen under the new government’s extreme austerity plans.
New economic war on the poor
Electricity tariffs were already raised by 75% last August and the cabinet led by new President Ranil Wickremesinghe approved a further increase of 65% this year, while the threat of extended daily power blackouts looms again. In the new year, Wickremesinghe called on public sector workers to work longer hours and announced the freezing of all state-sector recruitments. Medicine shortages are still widespread and food insecurity is growing. The prices of food, transport and many other essential items have exploded. The inflation and acute shortages are exploited by private sector speculators to reap extra profits.
The 2023 budget passed in December in Parliament, called by the trade unions the “most devastating piece of economic legislation following the 1977 liberalization”, includes new privatizations of state assets, the dismantling of existing labor laws, the slashing of tens of thousands of jobs, cuts in subsidies, steep tax hikes on working people and other increases in utility prices. These measures are in line with International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommendations, the implementation of which conditions the release of a US $2.9 billion bailout.
In the meantime, the country’s debt restructuring process has been caught in the geopolitical vortex of the New Cold War, as US imperialism is using its leverage in the IMF to put pressure on a reluctant Chinese regime, Sri Lanka’s largest bilateral lender, to accept a substantial writedown of its loans. Socialists call for the full and immediate cancellation of the country’s debt —including the part owned by large private bondholders, who have been making a killing by demanding very high interest rates while the majority of the population is facing unbearable living conditions— the nationalization of the banks and big corporations under democratic workers’ control, as well as the imposition of firm capital controls to prevent the looters to stash their money overseas.
Escalation of repression
By unloading the bill of the economic crisis over the shoulders of workers and poor, the new budget suits the interests of the big business elite, which is kept off the hook for its responsibility in the crisis, enjoys continuing tax benefits for itself, and sees new profiteering avenues opening up. Yet the same budget boosts once again the funding for the armed forces and the police, which have been allocated nearly double the amount going to the collapsing health sector. Whereas according to recent figures from the Ministry of Health, 43% of children under five now suffer from malnutrition, the government has procured 500 brand-new jeeps for its police under the credit line it received from India.
Since last summer, Wickremesinghe’s illegitimate and unpopular regime (ushered in by a hugely discredited Parliament still dominated by corrupt legislators from Rajapaksa’s party, the SLPP) has imposed a state of emergency, heavily cracked down on pretty much every single peaceful protest, and imprisoned scores of activists on baseless grounds. It has imposed the Essential Services Act that bans strikes in the electricity, oil and health sectors, and used the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act to neutralize anti-government protesters and leaders of the ‘Aragalaya’ (‘Struggle’), many of whom are now behind bars or under tight state surveillance.
Unsurprisingly, the government has also rejected calls for justice, truth and accountability for past violations and war crimes by state forces, particularly against the continuously persecuted Tamil minority. As it is, the war-torn Tamil provinces of the North and East remain under heavy military occupation, and the local population subjected to constant intimidation and abuse. Wickremesinghe, whose party the United National Party (UNP) has a long record of backing the Sinhalese-Buddhist supremacy of the state and the three decades-long bloody war against the Tamils, has declared he would “solve” the national question before the country’s 75th anniversary of independence, in February 2023, and has held an all-party conference for “national reconciliation” in December. In exchange for these token gestures, the main parliamentary Tamil party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), has scandalously abstained from voting against the government’s budget of economic onslaught, allowing it to pass in Parliament.
New signs of struggle
Between the TNA leaders who effectively vote with the political establishment in Colombo to attack workers and poor, and the arguably left-wing ‘People’s Liberation Front' (JVP) leaders who explicitly argue that “going to the IMF has become inevitable”, the current opposition parties offer no way forward for the working and oppressed masses of Sri Lanka, and are certainly no match for the fighting spirit the latter have demonstrated over the past year, including through two powerful general strikes. The dire absence of a political voice for the Aragalaya and the tepid attitude of most trade union leaders in conducting a proper and consistent struggle against the ruling class is what eventually allowed the 2022 uprising to be hijacked by a cabal of corrupt and pro-capitalist criminals. This state of affairs is unlikely, however, to prevent new bouts of mass resistance from workers, rural poor, students and young people sooner than later, as the conditions for millions of Sri Lankans are deteriorating sharp and fast.
In December, thousands of bank, insurance, telecom, electricity, railway, postal, healthcare, port and free trade zone workers demonstrated over several days across the country in opposition to the new budget, to privatization, and for improved working conditions. On January 9, public sector health workers joined a one-day strike across the island demanding pay rises and an end to job cuts, defying essential services orders and the deployment of the army against them. The Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) has announced a “black protest week” starting on January 23 if the government makes no move to amend the new tax laws.
A one-day general strike should be prepared so as to pull all sectors together in one single and elevated response. Grassroots and democratically-run action committees in workplaces, plantations, schools, universities and neighborhoods would help prepare and coordinate the necessary revival of the Aragalaya, but this time on a stronger basis —one that fully captures the potential power of the workers’ movement, takes a firm stand to uphold all democratic rights including the right of the justice-seeking Tamil community to their self-determination, and gives birth to an independent, islandwide working class alternative which can lead an uncompromising struggle against the capitalist system responsible for the untold misery, oppression and violence unleashed on the peoples of Sri Lanka.
According to the World Food Programme, 8 of the island’s 22 million residents live in food insecurity. In 2022 poverty in Sri Lanka doubled. The country went bankrupt and is today negotiating the payback of those loans granted by the various powers.
The country’s bankruptcy and general deficits led to a mass movement last summer to overthrow the regime of the Rajapaksa clan, which seemed then to have an iron grip on power. It was responsible for the very bloody end of the civil war against the Tamil minority in 2009 and maintained a strong position by propagating Sinhalese chauvinism. The 2022 mass movement showed that the Rajapaksa family can be defeated.
The economic crisis had been predictable for some time. Growth after the end of the war in 2009 was largely based on debt, both to Western banks, financial institutions, and speculators as well as to China, India, Japan and other powers. Moreover, a large part of those funds disappeared into the pockets of the ruling clique and a particularly large army. The decline in tourism following terrorist violence in April 2019 and its complete stagnation with the pandemic starting in 2020 made the downturn worse. The new cold war raging between the US and China and the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused rising prices for energy and food and made borrowing on the international markets more expensive. Everything came together leaving Sri Lanka no longer able to pay its debts.
That was the context of the eruption of protest in 2022. For the first time since 1980, there was a general strike. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to demand the end of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s regime. The presidential palace was stormed, not by a relatively small group of reactionaries as in the US in early 2021, or in Brasilia recently, but by broad sections of the population and with the support of the overwhelming majority.
The movement involved more than a storming of the palace or an occupation of the presidential swimming pool. The ongoing mass movement stormed toward elements of dual power: the old rulers still formally held power, but sections of society were taken over by workers and the poor. This, however, was not carried through to the end. The protesters had tasted the flavor of political power, but did not know what to do with it. After two weeks, the occupation was simply abandoned. The protest camp of the Aragalaya movement also eventually voluntarily ended.
The masses knew what they did not want, but had no idea about an alternative. In this vacuum, some of the old power was able to recover. Right-wing politician Ranil Wickremasinghe was raised from political death. In the last elections, Ranil and his United National Party, the historically strong bourgeois party of Sri Lankan capitalism, gained only one seat in parliament, his own seat. Firstly, he was swept up by Gotabaya as prime minister in place of Mahinda Rajapaksa who was the first to resign under pressure from the protest. Then Ranil was appointed president by the parliamentary majority of the parties allied with the Rajapaksas when Gotabaya also had to step down. As a prime minister he was succeeded by Dinesh Gunawardena, whose own small party stems from the tradition of socialist parties in the country (his father Philip Gunawardena was a leftist socialist) but has for years been allied with establishment politics, specifically with the party of the Rajapaksas. The question, then, is whether the Rajapaksas have really disappeared from the scene.
Behind the scenes, and sometimes even in public, negotiations continue with the various powers. Representatives of the Chinese regime visited in mid-January for talks. They brought $60,000 worth of school supplies and food to create support among the population. The Chinese embassy in Colombo tweeted afterward: “The public may also like to know how the US have walked the talk to help the Sri Lankan people when they have already received 10000 MT of rice [10 million kilogram], 9000 liters of diesel, 5 billion LKR [$13.6 million] of medicines and 3 million fabric meters of school uniform materials gifted by China?” The Chinese regime’s charm offensive obviously has to do with its own economic interests in Sri Lanka. Moreover, it is taking advantage of the enormous poverty in the country, while the Chinese regime does not even put debt cancellation on the agenda, limiting itself to just a two-year moratorium. Chinese banks fear that a cancellation in Sri Lanka would lead other countries to demand similar treatment.
Is there light at the end of the tunnel for the Sri Lankan people? Unfortunately, the situation remains disastrous. There has been an increase in financial remittances by relatives abroad to ease the immediate pain. In December, this amounted to $475.6 million compared to $352.2 million a year earlier. As a result, migration remains the main source of income for the population. Tourism is quietly coming back, but far from the levels seen before the pandemic and before the terrorist violence of April 2019. It is estimated that the 9.2% economic contraction in 2022 will be followed by another contraction of 4.2% in 2023.
Meanwhile, inflation remains high. The World Bank Food Security Update noted in early December that Sri Lanka is among the 10 countries hardest hit by food inflation, at 81% year-on-year. Shortages persist and power cuts are frequent. Protests fell silent for lack of an alternative and the regime is doing everything it can to keep it that way. There has been an increase in repression, including against student activists. Moreover, the threat of sectarian violence always hangs over the country. Ranil Wickremasinghe’s announcement that the 13th amendment to the constitution, which delegates more powers to the provinces, would be fully implemented seems to be aimed at attracting more support from India, rather than granting real rights to the minorities, especially the Tamil people in the north and east.
Moreover, things could get worse. Credit and installment negotiations come with conditions. For example, the World Bank wants “stronger private sector competition” and “more targeted social protection”. The IMF wants additional austerity. The government is implementing this with cuts in power subsidies and layoffs among civil servants and in the military. Privatizations of the airline and telecom company may follow. All this is causing a further decline in living standards, which is disastrous. Historically, working people and small farmers — in fact, mainly the Sinhalese majority population — enjoyed a standard of living that was higher than in the rest of the region. This was not the result of capitalist generosity, but due to the strength of the labor movement in which forces invoking Marxism have been active. The repression and civil war that followed the 1980 general strike dealt heavy blows to the labor movement. In the movement last year, we saw the return of that labor movement, but there are huge obstacles due to the context of shortages and due to ideological disarmament after years of defensive fragmentation of the unions and the left.
75 years after Sri Lanka’s independence, the country remains dependent on imperialist powers, including China and the regional superpower India. This brought its people to the brink. From the 2022 protest, we must remember that the working class, youth and agricultural workers are capable of using mass movements to overthrow regimes. However, it also became clear that the masses must build their own alternative with proposals for a society in which the majority of the people have a say by taking control of key sectors of the economy into their own hands. The movement demonstrated there is a need for new instruments of struggle, from committees of action to stronger trade unions and their own working class political party.
Such a party would need to be based on a program that rejects the entire capitalist system, and outlines with positive demands what a different, a democratic socialist society could look like. In this way, broad support could quickly be built. This would not be limited to Sri Lanka; it would be an example quickly picked up in other countries, not least in India where millions of working people and farmers are asking how to end the policies of Modi’s right-wing BJP government.
Last summer’s protest movement did not produce the desired and necessary change for the masses. On the other hand, the movement did not end in defeat: those in power are weak and very much afraid of new flare-ups of protest. The miserable conditions for the masses make new protests inevitable. In order to win, it is necessary for the masses to define what ‘winning’ means, in short a program of socialist change has to be worked out so that not only the political leaders but the whole of their system of misery is cast aside.
On the 75th anniversary of independence, it is useful to look back at how the Left reacted at the time. In the years before independence, the left was strong. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) based itself on Marxism and had a broad following. This party played an important role in workers’ struggles and in opposition to imperialism. The LSSP representatives elected to the National Council voted against war credits, and the party was repressively persecuted for its anti-imperialism. Party leaders were imprisoned or operated from India, where a new party — the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India, Burma and Ceylon (BLPI) was set up.
After the war, part of the BLPI cadre broke with that party to reestablish the LSSP. The BLPI, later transformed into the Bolshevik Socialist Party (BSP), and the LSSP won 15 of the 101 seats in Ceylon’s parliament in the 1947 elections. They were very active in the union struggle of 1946–47, which showed the strength of the labor movement even if it failed to achieve victories.
At the time of independence in 1948, there was much debate. The LSSP of Philip Gunawardena and NM Perera, the larger of the two socialist parties, was inclined to welcome independence. Even more so, behind the scenes at the time, attempts were already being made to reach an agreement with part of the supposedly progressive bourgeois politicians around S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who would subsequently set up the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and on several occasions include the LSSP and the Communist Party in a coalition government.
The LSSP argued in 1948 that there had been a retreat of the class struggle after the defeats of the 1946–47 union struggle, in which it played a major role. The party claimed that in a period of retreat there was less room for a class position. In that context, political independence had better be welcomed, even if there was no economic independence. LSSP leaders failed to see that the workers’ struggle of 1946–47 was merely a precursor to larger struggles, with the working class beginning to leave its mark on events.
A clear class position was more than needed. This would have better prepared the party for the struggles of the 1950s, with the great general strike of 1953. Instead of relying on that to strengthen its revolutionary position, the 1950-reunited LSSP joined a government under Bandaranaike in 1964. From a government position, the LSSP leaders found it even less obvious to develop a class program and accompanying actions.
The BSP took a different position in 1948. Leader Colvin R de Silva: “There is change. But the essence of this change lies not in any passage of Ceylon from colonial status to the status of independence, but in the change-over of British imperialism from methods of direct rule to methods of indirect rule.” His party, along with the Communist Party, initiated mass protests on Independence Day, with up to 50,000 demonstrators taking to the streets to demand “real independence”. This showed the potential for an independent class position, even if the call focused heavily on opposition to “fake independence” without much emphasis on what real independence would entail with a transitional approach between the daily struggle and what socialism means for the masses.
Before the war, the LSSP had some tradition in developing such an approach. The party worked out an extensive platform of demands and was involved in trade union actions, and in the fight against the malaria pandemic in 1934–35. Incidentally, it should be noted that after the merger with the LSSP, proponents of the BSP also rose to ministerial posts and did not hesitate to push the initial clarity around the national question with the plea for equal recognition of both national languages into the background in exchange for those posts.
This was brutally played out afterwards by the bourgeois forces who increasingly appealed to Sinhalese chauvinism to strengthen their position. These are just a few observations on the attitude of the left to Sri Lankan independence without claiming completeness and without being an expert on the fascinating and complex history of Sri Lankan Marxism.
If a general lesson can be drawn from the 1948 discussions, it is the importance of a class approach with a transitional program that popularizes a broader vision to concretize the struggle for social change and set it on the road to a socialist society.
