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.
මෙහි පලවන්නේ ලෝක සමාජවාදී වෙබ් අඩවියේ 2023 පෙබරවාරි 10 දින ඉංග්රීසියෙන් ප්රකාශයට පත් කෙරුනු The mass strike movement, war and the revolutionary crisis in Europe යන ලිපියේ සිංහල පරිවර්ථනය යි. පරිවර්ථනය SFවිසිනි.
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.
Public sector workers protest in Badulla town
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.
A protest in Vavuniya town
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.
A protest held in Jaffna town
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
