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Caricature of Reporting: How the WSWS Sri Lanka correspondents reported the EPF protest in Colombo

class struggles, english, politics / October 5, 2023

By Nandana Nanneththi.

“The report published on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on September 1, under the title “Over 1000 workers protest in Colombo against Sri Lanka government’s attacks‘, has yet again demonstrated the gross negligence of the Sri Lankan editorial board, hence undermining the historical credibility of the website.

The report was on a protest organized by a multitude of trade unions and civil organizations, and held in front of Colombo Fort railway station on August 28, against the subsuming of Employees’ Provident Fund under the government’s move to restructure the domestic debt. The Organizers, comprising about 40 organizations, could only manage to gather far less than 300 to participate in this demonstration. The number included the representatives of trade unions, capitalist parties, pseudo-left organizations and non-governmental organizations . (See the short video from the CACPS Facebook page)

The World Socialist Web Site, the publication tool of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), is the only authentic global socialist publication with a reputation as the theorist, the propagandist and the organizer of the global working class. Read daily by hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world, it is respected even by its adversaries for its integrity, scientific analysis and authenticity. It is the only international media for the working class to know the truth. Even In the past, on several occasions, we have raised objections when the Sri Lankan Editorial Board Published distorted reports on the web site.

The report claimed that, “about 1,200 workers and retirees participated in a Monday lunchtime protest at Colombo Fort Railway Station on August 28 to oppose the Wickremesinghe government’s attacks on pensions and new anti-democratic amendments to the country’s existing labor laws,” hence blaming the trade unions for the poor participation, allegedly due to the timing of the campaign, held at the one hour lunch break. The reason proffered for the poor attendance is the lack of such intent on the part of the trade unions and their commitment to dissipate the struggle.

This is a distortion in which the reporters forced the insertion of what they called the “lunch hour” into the report. It is thus argued that the agitation was restricted to the duration of the lunch hour to prevent the workers from participation, and had it been a call for a strike, the workers would have gathered by their thousands in response. Then, the report goes on to say that the workers of the Katunayake Free Trade Zone outside of Colombo also participated in the campaign. Needless to say, given the limited numbers participating, the percentage of FTZ workers’ participation would be in the decimals of a percentage. But, In actual fact, was it not the failed tactic of the organizers who hoped to get a better participation by making the opportunity for the workers in the neighborhood areas to participate without much difficulty or sacrifice during their lunch break? Objective factors exist as proof. For example, the Ceylon Bank Employees’ Union’s member participation in the protest could be counted with the fingers in one’s hands. It goes without saying that the area near the railway station would not have got enough space if only the employees of the banks around the Colombo Fort participated in the campaign.

Anyone with common sense should realize that the workers do not look for ‘free hours’ to take part in struggles and, sometimes, they risk their own lives in struggles. This ‘lunch hour’ fantasy is imposed only in order to build up the story as per the subjective expectations of the reporters. The trade unions expected the participation of about 5,000 people. They wanted to deceive and rally the workers around them, upon whom their grip was slipping, by using this opportunity to call a ‘struggle’ against the EPF issue. Hence they wanted to demonstrate to the ruling class that they still had influence over the workers, and to prove their worthiness to strike a bargain. Many workers are disillusioned about their treacherous role resulting only about 5% of the numbers expected by the union leaders actually participated in the campaign.

Over the past period the workers and masses engaged themselves in the struggle against the ruling classes not on anybody’s invitation or direction, but voluntarily. However, as a result of the continuing betrayals of these struggles- one after the other – the working class is temporarily trying to catch its breath back. If this had not been the case, there were objective grounds for workers to participate in this campaign, whether or not there was a calling. The said report tries to convince the reader that thousands would have participated if not for the technical error of limiting it to a ‘lunch hour’ demonstration, hence pushing true facts under the rug.

On the same morning, a meeting organized by the Electricity Consumers Association involving some of these leaders, and led by MDR Athula Of the Federation of Democratic State Employees’ Unions, was held at the Colombo Public Library Auditorium. The speakers of the meeting accused the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) of making emergency purchases (to make up for the shortfall in the national grid) and thereby discouraging investors of renewable energy resource development, causing them huge losses. The meeting seemed to be held under the auspices of the companies involved in renewable energy development, and the audience consisted of people who were ‘encouraged’ to participate by those companies. The leaders of that union, after making an appeal to the President Wickremesinghe to intervene to correct this situation, then joined the EPF agitation in front of Fort Railway Station. These leaders did not have any effective program that could be presented to the electricity consumers or to the EPF members, except for making stage-shaking speeches and whining appeals to the President to solve the problems. Is it a surprise that the workers and the poor do not give any attention worth two cents to these leaders?

There is no reason that, to the people of Sri Lanka who rejected all the political parties and their representatives in Parliament only less than a year ago, not to feel the long-run of betrayals of the trade unionists. The problem of the people consists in their inability to put these betrayals in a correct class perspective, having no alternative course of action and a leadership to guide it. A genuine working class organization can take over the leadership of the working class under these conditions. A struggle without indecision and hesitation is necessary to be developed against opportunism to realize this task. It is, therefore, a task bound with a relentless struggle against the practice of submitting to the subjectivity of glorification of the desire of the working class for a struggle to defend its living conditions, which is a form of backdoor acceptance of the familiar mantra, ‘the workers are not yet ready’, in the lethargic practice of imposing already known abstract truths on the live class struggle.

The above report in the WSWS announces the generalized truth of “this limited protest was called to assuage the growing anger of the working class against the government’s attacks”. It is also such a truism that the unions “have no intention of mobilizing workers in a real political and industrial struggle against the Wickramasinghe government”. But nevertheless, none of this, without a proper investigation within the frame of objective f

acts with which we are confronted with at the moment, and instead, shaping the descriptions of real events to suit ideas of one’s imagination and trying to impose them on the public, is completely hostile to the Marxist method followed by the WSWS.

The title of the article published in ‘The-Socialist.lk’ about this same event was, “Petty-bourgeois farce staged in front of the Colombo Railway Station on Monday”. That is the conclusion drawn from the analysis of the facts we gathered. As pointed out in that article, the union leadership is facing difficulties in getting the workers involved. “Duminda Nagamuwa, a leader of the Frontline Socialist Party, was complaining about the non-participation of the workers even before the event . He expressed his belief saying, ‘the workers numbering about 2.2 Million should think about this at least now’. The general concept that’s peddled by the union leaders is that “the working class is a stupid and backward lot that is not interested in protecting its own rights.” In that article, we confirmed with facts that the workers do not have faith in these unions and leaderships, not without reason, and that the bureaucracy works to demoralize the workers and to incite the petty bourgeoisie against them.

The show staged in front of the Fort railway station was a petty bourgeois farce; A comedy staged by the trade Unions. The union leaders, who threatened to topple the government if their demands were not met, proceeded a small distance forward as if they were going on a demonstration to the Central Bank. When the police announced that they, “are Ordering the crowd to disperse under Section 95(1)”, the union leaders vowed to the police, “We don’t want to go on in a demonstration as such, if a statement is issued saying this will not be done today, we will not proceed”. When some in the crowd demanded a promise that the Provident Fund would not be restructured, Ananda Palitha, one of the leaders in charge of campaign operations, the convener of the Samagi Trade Unions United Front ( the umbrella trade union front of the SJB, a break-away political party from the UNP and the main opposition party in the parliament), instead asked emphatically several times for a promise on “not doing it today”. “We need to win the people’s trust,” he stated the stark truth. Everything happened according to the pre-arranged script.

As reported by ‘The-Socialist’, the Central Bank postponed the decision on the restructuring of the fund until September 21, as a related case is pending in the Supreme Court. Union leaders Boasted showing this postponement too, as a victory. (see the real event, in the short video from the CACPS Facebook page)

Meanwhile, the police brought forth a promise for a discussion with the Central Bank. The union leaders declared victory and announced the end of the day’s proceedings. The discussion held with the Central Bank on September 5 failed as expected. According to the unions, what is now necessary is to bring in a new capitalist government, and to have new discussion. It’s so unfortunate that the restructuring would be complete. As The-Socialist pointed out, this campaign was entirely a reactionary operation against the workers, which was called for the sole purpose of providing the capitalist state an opportunity to constrain them, isolate them and attack them. Nothing else can be expected from these trade unions, which have demonstrated their impotence and anti-worker. pro-capitalist nature in every case; for example as in the case of privatization of the Eastern Terminal of the Colombo Port, and in the sale of important sectors of the Petroleum corporation to the private sector.

The WSWS article ends with a statement from a former employee of the Fertilizer Corporation. “We must continue to apply pressure. Ranil (Wickramasinghe) wants to continue the dictatorial rule but we want him out.” The same was said by the capitalist and pseudo-left party leaders who led the campaign. As The-Socialist report pointed out, the campaign of the trade unions was directed to infuse to the broad society the capitalist point of view – that the only options available are either concessions or another capitalist government. The most important thing we see here for us to simply report is that, if any report on revolutionary media is spreading the same stance, there is no point in that coverage. One can simply follow the capitalist media.

Bolshevism, upon which the WSWS bases itself, was extremely concerned with the accuracy of data:

“The data supplied by the Bolshevik press of 1917 are proving, in the light of historic criticism and the documents of the epoch, incomparably more correct than the data supplied by all the other newspapers. This correctness was a result of the revolutionary strength of the Bolsheviks, but at the same time it reinforced their strength. The renunciation of this tradition has subsequently become one of the most malignant features of epigonism.” (The History of the Russian Revolution, Volume II, page 356)

Our calling to the workers should be directed to overthrow the unionism which has become a major obstacle in the struggle against capitalism and, to establish a mass movement against capitalism through the formation of Action Committees on the basis of working class democracy.

Addressing the campaign, Athulasiri Samarakoon, a university lecturer, shamelessly declared the pseudo-left and trade union preparations to protect the anti-worker capitalist state. See the video from the CACPS facebook page

Instead, the WSWS article’s principal objective seems to be announcing that, even the trade unions and the pseudo-left leaderships are still possessing the capability of drawing the workers of Sri Lanka into struggles, if not for their tactical érrors’. This attitude implies the adaptation to a backwardness inherited through the historical roots and expressed within the working class, instead of a relentless struggle to solve it.

We will not turn our backs to the partial demands of the workers. Since its inception, the EPF fund has been governed by a monetary board headed by the Governor of the Central Bank. Although the fund belongs to the workers, it is not accountable to them, but to the capitalist governments. This should be changed. The demand of trade unions and other capitalist agencies which had called this ‘struggle’, was that the union leaders too should participate in making decisions about the provident fund as it is a workers’ fund. But the reality is that these unions represent less than approximately 15 percent of the country’s working class, and they do not budge even an inch away from capitalism. The workers should not fight for these empty demands, but to get the full control of the fund to a board of their own choosing, the members of which they can elect and recall at any time. A prerequisite for realizing this, is the displacement of trade unions by workers’ independent Action Committees in every workplace, against all the delusive bluff of pseudo- left organizations.

[This article was earlier published in Sinhalese here on September 09, 2023.]

Caricature of Reporting: How the WSWS Sri Lanka correspondents reported the EPF protest in Colombo Read More »

In defence of SEP: The call to build on historical lessons of the Trotskyist movement for intra-party democracy

english, politics / August 23, 2023

By Nihal Gikianage for SEP-SL Left Faction

The letter posted below was sent on October 28, 2022 by the comrades of the Left Faction of Sri Lanka Socialist Equality Party (SEP), Chilaw branch, to its General Secretary Deepal Jayasekara, to defend the party from the anti-democratic and conspiratorial activities of the party leadership. Such efforts by the members were frowned upon by the party bureaucracy and led to the party leadership’s disastrous decision that there was no other option but to expel a large number of comrades. It should be noted that the first time even the party members were reading this letter was when this was published originally in Sinhala language here on August 7, 2023. Dozens of letters sent by the SEP-SL left faction to the party leadership were thrown into the dustbin without any discussion within the membership.

***

Deepal Jayasekara,

General Secretary, Socialist Equality Party- Sri Lanka.

Dear Comrade,

Three months have passed since the membership of comrades Nandana, Sanjay and Ananda Wakkumbura has been suspended, but up to date no political issue has been raised regarding these three.

There must be political reasons for a dispute in the revolutionary party. They must be irreconcilable class antagonisms, not mere ‘reasons’. We categorically state in all seriousness that you have no such reasons to offer.

We are engaged in a continuous struggle in our branch opposing the undemocratic suspension of the party membership of these comrades. The branch leadership says that raising this issue itself is against the centralism of the party. Establishing centralism against democracy is the practice of the party regime. As against this, every effort made to examine the historical experience of the world Marxist movement was opposed by the party regime including the branch leadership. It is a sign that the political health of the party has deteriorated.

In analyzing the issues that arise within the party, the policy based on dialectical materialism is to call upon the historical wisdom of our movement. But it is difficult to get the majority of the membership towards this approach. Even under these circumstances, we the undersigned, Wijesinghe, Punyawardena and Nihal in the Chilaw branch are fighting without let up against this anti-democratic action taken by the party.

Engaging in political struggle or trying to develop discussions for political clarity are the real reasons for suspending the membership of these comrades. The leadership has worked to carry out their actions without facing serious opposition in the party membership although they were done without any discussion with the three comrades and without giving them an opportunity to present the facts. This was achieved by a campaign of lies and accusations against these comrades. For example, the propaganda that they have rejected the party’s invitations to negotiate. Another one is the propaganda that comrade Nandana chases away those who come to join the party saying they are police spies.

Nihal raised this question in his intervention at the members’ meeting last attended by Comrade Wijay in last July.

He quoted this passage taken from the Declination of the Bolshevik Party from Trotsky’s brilliant work “Revolution Betrayed” ” The inner regime of the Bolshevik party was characterized by the method of democratic centralism. The combination of these two concepts, democracy and centralism, is not in the least contradictory. The party took watchful care not only that its boundaries should always be strictly defined, but also that all those who entered these boundaries should enjoy the actual right to define the direction of the party policy.

Freedom of criticism and intellectual struggle was an irrevocable content of the party democracy. The present doctrine that Bolshevism does not tolerate factions is a myth of epoch decline. In reality the history of Bolshevism is a history of the struggle of factions. And, indeed, how could a genuinely revolutionary organization, setting itself the task of overthrowing the world and uniting under its banner the most audacious iconoclasts, fighters and insurgents, live and develop without intellectual conflicts, without groupings and temporary factional formations? The farsightedness of the Bolshevik leadership often made it possible to soften conflicts and shorten the duration of factional struggle, but no more than that. The Central Committee relied upon this seething democratic support. From this it derived the audacity to make decisions and give orders. The obvious correctness of the leadership at all critical stages gave it that high authority which is the priceless moral capital of centralism.” (Chapter 2: The Degeneration of the Bolshevik Party; 2nd Paragraph – Revolution Betrayed)

After this long quote, he asked Comrade Wijay to re-assess the decision taken against these comrades who are well experienced and very close to the International Committee, placing it in this context.

Taking this struggle forward when Comrade Nihal raised the question about these comrades in the Chilaw branch, Comrade Quintin threateningly requested the local secretary Kapila to call for a vote and throw him out, Kapila said that he would not hesitate to do so.

It was the Ratnasiri leadership of the Ambalangoda branch who first conducted this vote taking. Comrade Nandana accused the party leadership of using gimmicks during the recent party congress. He requested a discussion about the congress to solve these problems. Solely on this matter, when three members of the committee including Nandana were absent, Ratnasiri the local secretary, a member of the party’s political committee, confirmed the allegation by Nandana’s that the party leadership is resorting to gimmicks, by calling for a vote and banning Nandana’s membership. The political committee suspended his membership without any discussion.

We allege that there are threats to implement the same policy in other branches in which, there are members fighting for the suspended comrades. ie. Ambalangoda, Kandy, Kolonnawa and Chilaw.

In the Chilaw branch we continuously fought to consider these questions based on the historical knowledge of our own Trotskyist movement. But the branch leadership always declared that this is a petty bourgeois tendency and will be purged from the party. The party has not made any political explanation up to date of this so-called petty bourgeois tendency. Even if we accept that this is such a tendency for a moment, we cannot agree to the behavior of the leadership at all.

Comrade Nihal brought forth an example from Trotsky’s ” In Defense of Marxism” to inform the branch members about how the Trotskyist movement fought with petty bourgeois tendencies. This was not regarding a bogus charge of ‘petty bourgeois tendency’ that is thrust upon on Nandana, Wakkumbura and Sanjay by the leadership, but of an actual petty bourgeois tendency that arose in the Socialist Workers Party in 1939. “The following question can be posed: If the opposition is a petty-bourgeois tendency does that signify further unity is impossible? Then how reconcile the petty-bourgeois tendency with the proletarian? To pose the question like this means to judge one-sidedly, undialectically and thus falsely. In the present discussion the opposition has clearly manifested its petty-bourgeois features. But this does not mean that the opposition has no other features. The majority of the members of the opposition are doubly devoted to the cause of the proletariat and are capable of learning. Tied today to a petty-bourgeois milieu they can tomorrow tie themselves to the proletariat. The inconsistent ones, under the influence of experience, can become more consistent. When the party embraces thousands of workers even the professional factionalists can re-educate themselves in the spirit of proletarian discipline. It is necessary to give them time for this. That is why comrade Cannon’s proposal to keep the discussion free from any threats of split, expulsions, etc., was absolutely correct and in place.”

(https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/in-defense-of-marxism-leon-trotsky1939/11.html)

Trotsky’s attitude towards the Burnham, Shatman and Abern group, which clearly showed petty bourgeois characteristics in the Trotskyist movement, is clear.

Moreover, let us consider by a short excerpt, how Comrade North used Trotsky’s explanations in ‘In defense of Marxism’ in the work, ‘how did the Workers Revolutionary Party betray Trotskyism’, in his struggle. “To make matters worse, the political differences raised by Thornett, to the extent that they had been developed in the autumn of 1974, had not reached the level at which a split could be justified in front of the working class. It was not sufficient for Healy and Banda to have a hunch, no matter how astute, that Thornett was functioning as an agent of the OCI. In 1940 Trotsky had warned Cannon not to take premature organizational measures against the minority, insisting that “you must act not only on the basis of your subjective appreciations, as correct as they may be, but on the basis of objective facts available to everyone” And he cautioned that organizational impatience “is not infrequently connected with theoretical indifference.” (In Defense of Marxism, New Park, p. 198)

(https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/how-the-wrp-betrayedtrotskyism/06.html )

It is clear that the party has resorted to a policy of those who turned their backs to Trotskyism instead that of Trotskyism. It is a matter that needs to be examined. We are working on it and we think the party leadership will consider it seriously.

For that, we suggest that the party leadership, including you, should re-assess this organizational step in this historical context.

Over the past period, the entire party revolved around secondary issues, and as a result, the party failed to anticipate the class struggle that started in Sri Lanka in April and is still going on, and to make a successful intervention in it. In order to cut through the party’s past political setbacks and make a revolutionary intervention in the class struggle implementing the perspective of developing Action Committees and proceeding towards a congress of Action Committees in keeping with the perspectives of the International Committee, the internal problems of the party must first be resolved. This is because the International Committee has very clearly and brilliantly identified that this decade as the decade of revolutions and wars, and identified this as a unique period for the world Trotskyist movement. The political setback of our party is taking place in this context.

The leadership did not undertake the task of understanding the idea of building Action committees through a serious discussion within the cadre. In a discussion about action committees in the Chilaw branch, we presented a quote from Trotsky’s ‘Death agony of Capitalism’. ” Soviets are not limited to an a priori party program. They throw open their doors to all the exploited. Through these doors pass representatives of all strata, drawn into the general current of the struggle. The organization, broadening out together with the movement, is renewed again and again in its womb. All political currents of the proletariat can struggle for leadership of the soviets on the basis of the widest democracy. The slogan of soviets, therefore, crowns the program of transitional demands.” (The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International; Chapter 14 – The Soviets – Paragraph 3) On these occasions, the branch secretary Comrade Kapila said, “We are not building them so that each and every person could walk through these doors.” This exposes the party leadership’s idea about working committees.

These differences of opinion call for a genuine democratic discussion to consider the responsibilities our party in facing the current class struggle.

In the book “The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century”, Comrade Noth’s explanation about internal party democracy, ” The importance of inner-party democracy was not simply one of abstract principle, nor was its practical significance limited to its direct impact on the field of economic policy. What was ultimately at stake in the struggle waged by Trotsky in defense of Soviet democracy was the fate of the entire heritage of socialist culture and revolutionary thought as it had developed in the international workers movement over the previous century. The bureaucracy dealt with Marxism as it did with Lenin’s corpse: it was mummified and made the object of ritualistic and semimystical incantations. After 1927 Marxism, for all intents and purposes, ceased to play any role whatsoever in the formulation of Soviet policy. The defeat of the Opposition sounded the death knell for the development of critical thought in virtually every sphere of intellectual and cultural activity.”

(https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinishedtwentieth-century/04.html )

Drawing your attention to the points we explained in this letter, the suspension of the party membership of the three comrades should be removed, and this discussion should be resolved within the party. If there is a reason for not doing so, please explain.

Fraternally,

Nihal Geekianage,

Punyawardena,

K. Wijesinghe

28.10.2022

In defence of SEP: The call to build on historical lessons of the Trotskyist movement for intra-party democracy Read More »

In defence of SEP: Countering the purge of Comrade Amaratunga from Ambalangoda Local

english, politics / August 23, 2023

By L.P. Udayaprema, for SEP-SL Left Faction

The letter posted below was sent on November 16, 2022 by Comrade Udayaprema of the Ambalangoda branch of the Sri Lanka Socialist Equality Party (SEP) to its General Secretary Deepal Jayasekara to defend the party from the anti-democratic and conspiratorial activities of the party leadership. Such efforts by the members were frowned upon by the party bureaucracy and led to the party leadership’s disastrous decision that there was no other option but to expel a large number of comrades. It should be noted that the first time even the party members were reading this letter was when this was published originally in Sinhala language here on August 7, 2023. Dozens of letters sent by the SEP-SL left faction to the party leadership were thrown into the dustbin without any discussion within the membership.

***

Comrade Jayasekara,

Regarding the expulsion of Comrade Amaratunga of the Ambalangoda Local Council by Comrade Ratnasiri, the secretary of the Local, abusing his authority

Comrade Ratnasiri, claiming that comrade Amaratunga has left the party, has barred comrade Amaratunga’s participation in the Local meetings since 7th July 2022. Comrade Ratnasiri considers a statement made by comrade Amarathunga protesting the arbitrary suspension of the three comrades Nandana, Sanjaya and Wakkumbura as the reason for this criminal act, which was carried out arbitrarily without any discussion in the Local assembly. What Comrade Amaratunga said was, “If things are being done this way, there is no point in being in this party any longer”.

As reported to the local council, Ratnasiri’s action was approved by the political committee without any inquiry!

The conflict between Amaratunga and Ratnasiri arose out of Ratnasiri’s continuous wrong political practices in the Local. To understand these differences of opinion, let us bring to your attention of 3 incidents.

It is unconstitutional for the Political Committee to suspend Comrade Nandana’s membership while he was a member of the party Central Committee. Comrade Udayprema cited our constitution and raised these issues in the local assembly. Ratnasiri making a phone call to Amaratunga specifically for this purpose said that there is no such paragraph in the constitution. Later at a subsequent discussion of the Local, Ratnasiri had to admit that what he said was a lie. Amaratunga intervened on that occasion condemning this irresponsible act.

Despite the fact that there were many issues that needed to be resolved, the leadership’s attempt to hold the party conference, without allowing for a discussion, in violation of the constitution, led to a controversy in the Ambalangoda Local committee.

Ratnasiri said that the constitution is not decisive. To confirm this, he lied that Lenin did not implement the April thesis following a decision in a congress. He further argued that the October Revolution would not have happened if conferences had to be held like that. We pointed out that the above thesis was presented to the Bolshevik Central Committee on 6th April, 1917 and to the Party Congress on April 10 and was adopted by the Congress, but Ratnasiri continued to defend his incorrect position.

Three members, including Comrade Nandana, requested that the Local commitee, which was to be held on 15 th June, be convened on another day as they were not in a position to attend. Despite this , secretary Ratnasiri assembled the Local commitee without the relevant comrades and proceeded to pass a resolution to suspend Comrade Nandana. Condemning this anti-democratic act, Comrade Amaratunga insisted that he is against holding this vote and therefore will not participate in it. Later, he informed the political committee that the Ratnasiri’s resolution was approved by a majority vote and that Amaratunga was neutral and the political committee implemented that decision. Amaratunga was not neutral, but was opposed to holding the vote.

Amaratunga, like many other comrades, was confused by this provocation which the party leadership consciously implemented. Amaratunga suggested to the committee to take steps for political clarity in order to correct these mistakes. Under these circumstances only, came Amaratunga’s remarks that he could no longer continue under this leadership. But Ratnasiri took this as an opportunity to advance the current situation in which actions are being taken to hunt down the party members who do not support anti-democratic, anti-tradition and anti-theoretical actions.

Through the intervention of Udayaprema and Geetha in the local committee, a consensus was reached that the problem should be resolved by discussing with Amaratunga.

Accordingly, Udayaprema was assigned to meet Amaratunga. Amaratunga told Udaya that there is no solution (politically speaking) other than the party; and that he is waiting for the date of the local committee meeting to be announced. It was reported to the local assembly, but Ratnasiri did not agree to invite him. He said that Amaratunga should make a written request to join the party as a new member. Ratnasiri rejected that Amaratunga did not leave the party.

Our party had a tradition of trying to solve problems such as this by sending a representative of the political committee to participate in the local committee. Such practices have been abandoned since many years. Now this is another example of uprooting the traditions and accepted practices needed for gaining political clarity. An important fact here is that the leadership worked to sweep away like dust a worker with a continuous history of 46 years in the party. When Amaratunga was working as a miner, he came forward to oppose the betrayal by the LSSP trade union and, the union leadership and the employers conspired together to sack him. He lost his job. He turned to RCL with this experience. The party has now given him the same treatment as the leaders of that trade union. He was greatly shocked and it affected his health. If not for our intervention and explanations made at the request of his family members, even his life would have been endangered.

He fought tirelessly against the 30-year war and against the JVP’s tyranny. He is a much respected and loved fighter in the area as well as within the party. He has a record of being true to the International Committee and the Party at all times. Since 1989, he has been suffering from a severe heart disease and he did not consider this condition as an obstacle to any of party work. Neighbors regard him as a leader because of the life he spent as a man who does not bow down to backwardness and always standing by principles.

When in 1978 Basil Fernando and Siriwardena rejected party perspectives outright, the RCL discussed with them for 6 months and tried to get political clarity. Such actions were

based on the decisive lessons of the struggle that Trotsky and Cannon had with Burnham Shatman group. When we raised these issues, Ratnasiri denounced this historical experience as mistakes made during the time of Healy. These statements, and the dismissal, shows the petty bourgeoise disregard for the history of the movement. This fact has been confirmed by the way in which the comrades Nandana, Sanjaya and Vakkambura have been treated as well as Amaratunga. What is important is to develop the party and thereby intensify the class struggle by raising the issues regarding perspectives and programme and clarifying them. Instead of that, such behaviors open the doors of the party to petty bourgeoise opportunism. We insist that it is necessary to realize this without delay.

In the first local meeting after 3rd Party conference (on 25.5.2022), Comrade Ratnasiri tried to appoint office bearers, keeping Comrades Nandana, Geetha and Udayaprema away. This has been informed to you by Comrade Nandana in his letter dated 29.5.2022, but you have chosen to ignore it.

Comrade Ratnasiri had informed the above comrades that the meeting would be started at 7.30 PM and, started it at 7 PM informing only the other members of the branch. After that, officials were appointed before the political discussion with an anti-traditional haste. Comrade Nandana’s opposition in this regard was introduced as sabotage. Comrade Amaratunga and the above three comrades left the meeting opposing the suppression of discussion and threatening of the local leadership.

We warn that it is extremely dangerous for the leadership to continue to disregard the old traditions and constitution of the party in the current intense class struggle, and to expel the comrades who have been members of the party for a long time without any discussion is opening the door to the reaction.

Comrade Missaka, who was a member of the Central Committee until he left the party, and a young Comrade Hirun, who demanded a discussion about the arbitrary actions of the party leadership have left the party, because even the 3rd Party Congress last year too defended these actions. Even though they have made written submissions to the leadership, no discussion whatsoever had been held within the party regarding them up to this date.

Dismissal of political, theoretical and organizational issues emerging within the acute situation of the contemporary class struggle, without any assessment or clarification is a clear indication that the party is being driven by pragmatism. For this reason, we understand that, it is required to have a genuine democratic discussion on the problems that have arisen regarding the comrades who have been kept away from the party including Amaratunga, which would be an essential requirement in order to understand the tasks of the party at a higher level and to create the necessary organizational preparations in implementing them. For that, we propose all four comrades mentioned here should be reinstated as members immediately.

We suggest that this letter should be shared among the party membership and a discussion should be commenced.

Fraternally,

Udayaprema, Geeta

Local Council, Ambalangoda.

16.11.2022

In defence of SEP: Countering the purge of Comrade Amaratunga from Ambalangoda Local Read More »

In defence of SEP: Countering the purge of Comrade Amaratunga from Ambalangoda Local

english, politics / August 23, 2023

By L.P. Udayaprema, for SEP-SL Left Faction

***

Comrade Jayasekara,

Regarding the expulsion of Comrade Amaratunga of the Ambalangoda Local Council by Comrade Ratnasiri, the secretary of the Local, abusing his authority

As reported to the local council, Ratnasiri’s action was approved by the political committee without any inquiry!

Through the intervention of Udayaprema and Geetha in the local committee, a consensus was reached that the problem should be resolved by discussing with Amaratunga.

When in 1978 Basil Fernando and Siriwardena rejected party perspectives outright, the RCL discussed with them for 6 months and tried to get political clarity. Such actions were

We suggest that this letter should be shared among the party membership and a discussion should be commenced.

Fraternally,

Udayaprema, Geeta

Local Council, Ambalangoda.

16.11.2022

In defence of SEP: Countering the purge of Comrade Amaratunga from Ambalangoda Local Read More »

Sri Lanka Socialist Equality Party regime expels seven more members from the Party

english, politics / August 23, 2023

Statement of the SEP-SL Left Faction

Extending their bureaucratic policy of “purge”, the leadership of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), Sri Lanka has announced the expulsion of 07 more members from the Party. The respective members have been informed through a letter that states that the Central Committee which met on August, 2 2023 has taken the decision for the expulsions, due to their “continued indiscipline, while repudiating the recommendations of the Political Committee.”

The Political Committee of the Party is claiming that the members have violated the PC recommendation to abstain from continuing any relations with Sanjaya Jayasekara and Nandana Nanneththi who had been Expelled from the party earlier; and to refrain from supporting the Colombo Action Committee (CAC) – the Colombo based action committee which unanimously adopted the July 20, 2022 resolution of the SEP, during its inauguration meeting held on September 11, 2022. Sanjaya was expelled for publicly representing the revolutionary perspective of the SEP in ‘Gota-go-gama’ (Galle face Greens protest site) during the mass uprising last year, and for establishing CAC and sharing its facebook posts. Nandana was subjected to a systematic and provocative mudslinging campaign amongst members of the party on various bogus charges. When the repeated requests for a discussion was denied and Nandana started responding through his facebook page (while his membership was under suspension, depriving him to defend himself in branch meetings), he was charged with violating the party discipline. Their responses to the charges levelled against them were never taken up for discussion among the members, nor any disciplinary inquiry was ever held. The party leadership has not explained to the membership the political reasons for the expulsion of these two leading members, except for publishing three documents in Sinhalese, which are full of nothing but subjective allegations without political substance, demonstrative of its nationalist orientation on the issues. The party leadership has also, so far, failed to give any political reason as to why they are hostile to the CAC.

Following are the seven party members victimized on the latest round:

Ivan, Kandy Local –A retired government clerk, a member of Kandy Committee since 1972;
Nihal Geekiyanage, Chilaw Local – a member since July 1980 and former Central Committee member;
Ratne alias Punyawardena, Chilaw Local – worker in fisheries sector, a member since 1990;
Wijesinghe, Chilaw Local – health sector employee, a member since 2008;
Karunasena, Rathmalana Local – Factory level Union activist in early 1980s, who actively participated in forming an action committee under the guidance of Revolutionary Communist League (RCL) during the Rowlands Factory strike – a member since 1982;
Udayaprema, Ambalangoda Local – Cartoonist, a member since 1988 and former Central Committee member;
Geetha, Ambalangoda Local – a member since 1990, a full-time party activist in ’90s, campaigning among workers in the Free Trade Zone, Katunayake.

Under circumstances in which nothing was politically explained, never given any opportunity to have a discussion to clarify issues, and contravening the party constitution by not allowing them to prove their innocence at a disciplinary enquiry, these comrades took a principled stance in refusing to submit to these edicts presented in a dictatorial manner.

The SEP’s third national congress, held from May 14-16, 2022, was a congress almost exclusively prepared to carry out these expulsions, and directed through covert machinations. Earlier It was attempted to be held in March 2022, giving only a few days’ notice to the members, such that the membership would have no chance to prepare for the congress. The purpose of this plan was to avoid all discussion about the political, theoretical and organizational retreats of the party and anti-democratic tendency taking shape in the party. However, following the intervention of the International Committee (ICFI) upon being informed of this attempt by the members of the left faction of the party, the effort was defeated.

Although the purpose of postponement was to allow necessary time for pre-Congress discussions, the actual mannar the things took place was disgraceful. The documents forwarded by members for the pre-Congress discussions were not distributed among the membership. Even in the limited cases where some discussions were held, the party regime acted to suppress the opposing views and eliminated every possibility of a deep going discussion on the issues. The Congress was held online due to the COVID-19 epidemic situation and the regime used the situation to its advantage even to the extent of rigging the vote. Some members were denied the right to vote. Members who fought for principles were forced to leave the party or to become inactive. For example, comrade William of the Bulathsinhala Local, who is a long-time member of the party, was assigned to the Bandarawela Local, a locality more than 100 miles away from his home or work place. Comrade William had no connection with this area and there was no reason what-so-ever for this decision, which was taken purely at the discretion of the leadership. Considering the extensive travel time under the prevailing poor transport facilities and costs in Sri Lanka, this decision – which added to the party leadership’s ban on so-called ‘cross-connections’ (banning the members of different locals discussing with each other) – was nothing but forcing him to be inactive in party politics. The only logical reason one can derive on this decision is that it was because he dared to question the leadership based on his long experience in the party. Principled members who opposed the regime’s anti-Bolshevik actions were removed from the leadership and replaced by backward and economically well-to-do petty-bourgeois individuals, such as businessmen.

Two members, who were very much frustrated by these events, left the party ranks within two weeks following the Congress. They claimed that, as their all efforts to clarify the situation were not allowed, they would have no further relationship with the party. They had submitted written statements to Vilani Peiris who was the secretary of the Colombo Fort Local and to the Political Committee, with supporting evidence on the issues they raised. One of these two members was Missaka, who was a member of the Central Committee until the Third Congress.

When the Ambalangoda Local Committee met for the first time after the Congress, the local secretary and political committee member, Ratnasiri Malalagama acted in contravention of the long-standing tradition of conducting a political discussion and assessment of the Congress. When Nandana Nanneththi opposed this practice and requested a review discussion about the Congress, the newly appointed General Secretary, Deepal Jayasekara decided to ban Nandana Nanneththi’s membership. Comrade Amartunga, a member of Ambalangoda Local and an active member since 1976 – a mining worker who joined the party having fought against the bureaucratic witch-hunt by trade union leaderships – was de facto expelled for his opposing views on the expulsion of comrade Nandana.

On November 19, 2022, comrades Nandana and Sanjaya were permanently expelled from the party membership. Afterwards, comrade Migara of the Kolonnawa local committee was expelled for opposing this move. Comrade Sunil of Ratmalana Committee, who had been with the party since the ’70s, too had to face the similar fate. Thus, within a period of little more than one year after the Congress, the regime led by the new General Secretary, Jayasekara has ‘purged’ (the word historically closely associated with bureaucracies, is often used by SEP leadership to mean to administratively suppress dissenting views) twelve members from the Party. Thereby, the party leadership may justly lay claim to a special infamous record in the history of the Fourth International! The list of defectors runs longer than that. More members, although not having expressed any opposing view prior to or during the Congress have left since the third Congress, proffering various reasons for leaving; or, there are others who ran away without as much as a word. Among those who left after the 2022 Congress are Dhanapala (a member since the early days of RCL) and Niluka from the Kandy Local, Mahesh from Chilaw Local, and Sathish Kumar from Ratmalana Local. Several Dozen left the party between the last two Congresses. The Avissawella local committee was disbanded. The irresponsible response from the leadership to those who questioned this serious erosion and its political implications was, “they come and they go… there is nothing to discuss about it”.

Significantly, the Party has also lost another Political Committee Member, Prageeth Aravinda, who decided to leave the party, yearly this year. Aravinda was re-appointed to the Central Committee at the Third Congress, and was a member of the Sri Lanka Editorial Board of WSWS. He was employed by the unclean hands of the party bureaucracy to destroy the Action Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Art and Expression (ACDAE), which had been operating successfully. When the pertinent issues were raised in the open letters addressed to him by Comrade Nandana on November 19, 2022, and by the committee’s former Chairperson, Comrade Sanjaya on January 30, 2023, he ran away failing to answer them.

Ananda Wakkumbura, a founding member of the SEP, as well as a leading founding member of its predecessor, the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), had to spend several months under suspension of membership, due to his intervention, with the ICFI Perspective, in the last year’s mass uprising at the Gota-go-gama protest site. Bowing down to the bogus allegations, he was lately able to regain his membership, but is being treated as an invalid coin in the organization, which he devoted his entire life to build. The regime is demanding the Left faction to follow his example.

Generally, a congress is an opportunity, which provides space for a party’s issues to be debated, clarified and finally resolved, thus laying the groundwork for the party to begin work with a renewed vigor as a theoretically, politically and organizationally stronger, unified organization. Although the party developed and published a Perspective under the supervision of the International Committee, the leadership has only treated it as just another formal ‘document’. The Congress concentrated on taking the focus away from its Perspectives through slander and mudslinging. This example alone is sufficient to understand that the party regime pays only lip service to the perspectives, while adopting pragmatism in practice.

In contrast, Comrade David North, Chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), at the beginning of the third Congress, brought ICFI’s greetings for the Congress and assessed it as follows:

“In the present circumstances, the Congress is not an occasion merely for commenting on the events happening outside of it. The party leadership, every delegate, must clearly understand, as I am sure you do, that all the discussions are invested with an immense and immediate political and historical content. Therefore, the fundamental challenge that this Congress confronts is to clearly define the attitude of the Sri Lankan section of the IC to the immense and decisive global events, and, of course, to the developing revolutionary crisis within Sri Lanka. In this sense, the Congress that you are holding has many similarities to the Congress of the Bolshevik Party in April 1917, the first Congress held following the return of Lenin to Russia amid a revolutionary crisis.”

The party regime treated this objective historical assessment as a laurel conferred upon it, and a license from comrade North to do as it pleased for holding a congress similar to the one held by Lenin! Indeed, North’s emphasis was on the historical responsibilities of the party. It was an emphasis on politically preparing to confront the developing world war situation and on the challenge of facing the growing revolutionary crisis in the country itself. Despite this insistence, the regime turned its back on the revolutionary crisis as it escalated and, conspired against and ousted the members who resisted the evasion. The meaning of alienating itself from the genuine mass movement of April-August 2022, the rejection of genuine action committees such as the CAC and maintaining the position that true action committees are only those approved by the party, is that the bureaucracy wants mass struggles to seek its approval, and suppressed, as, being politically and organizationally unprepared, it is unable to face the challenge posed by unprecedented mass struggles. According to the bureaucracy, the independent Action Committees are to be dictated by the programmes of the International Committee and are not viewed as instruments of mobilizing mass movement.

We assure the working class that the SEP-SL Left Faction, which opposes this anti-Marxist tendency within the party, cannot be silenced and numbed by expulsions and all kinds of witch-hunts. Members of the Left Faction will fight to protect and safeguard the ICFI programme and its best traditions and, in that regard, will not hesitate to stake their lives. It will fight any attempt by the Party to derail the Party from those policies. We reject the SEP regime’s claim that the CAC is Identical to the Left Faction and it hides behind it. The Left Faction does not seek shelter in CAC and fights within the working class with a revolutionary perspective. We have successfully fought for the ICFI perspective within the CAC to adopt it and, we carry forward this struggle more intensively within the working class. We, the Left faction, are determined to break all bureaucratic barriers placed between us and the ICFI and fight for the unity of the working class and for the perspective of World Socialist Revolution under the banner of ICFI.

[A statement with the similar content was published in Sinhala here on August 07, 2023]

Sri Lanka Socialist Equality Party regime expels seven more members from the Party Read More »

Sri Lanka Socialist Equality Party regime expels seven more members from the Party

english, politics / August 23, 2023

Statement of the SEP-SL Left Faction

Following are the seven party members victimized on the latest round:

Ivan, Kandy Local –A retired government clerk, a member of Kandy Committee since 1972;
Nihal Geekiyanage, Chilaw Local – a member since July 1980 and former Central Committee member;
Ratne alias Punyawardena, Chilaw Local – worker in fisheries sector, a member since 1990;
Wijesinghe, Chilaw Local – health sector employee, a member since 2008;
Karunasena, Rathmalana Local – Factory level Union activist in early 1980s, who actively participated in forming an action committee under the guidance of Revolutionary Communist League (RCL) during the Rowlands Factory strike – a member since 1982;
Udayaprema, Ambalangoda Local – Cartoonist, a member since 1988 and former Central Committee member;
Geetha, Ambalangoda Local – a member since 1990, a full-time party activist in ’90s, campaigning among workers in the Free Trade Zone, Katunayake.

[A statement with the similar content was published in Sinhala here on August 07, 2023]

Sri Lanka Socialist Equality Party regime expels seven more members from the Party Read More »

“Layattu Koligal” (Estate Hens) – an artwork recreating the lives of workers

art and culture, english, Living Conditions / July 28, 2023

By Nandana Nanneththi

Script, Direction and Music by: R Loganandan

KCostumes and Makeup: Selvaraj Lilavati

Drama Material: M. Navaneethan

Production: Theater Mates Culture Association, Kotiyagala

“Layattu Koligal” is a drama embodying the lives and struggle of estate workers, and is meant to be played either on the street or on the stage. Despite threats from the army, police, estate management and union leaders, it premiered on July 9 at Kotiyagala estate, Bogawantalawa. Later it was staged on July 16 and 18 at Kernerswold Middle Section and Champion Upper Section Estates subsequently, and will be staged in various parts of the island in the coming days.

Scenes from Layaththu Koligal

The troupe faced a number of obstacles. An officer from the military unit in charge of the area, having been informed by his intelligence unit of the plan to stage the drama, contacted the director over the phone and warned him not to stage any event without first informing the military unit. Then, a union leader threatened that he cannot allow staging the drama, as it may create troubles for him.

Drama director Loganandan, explaining the difficult situation he faced, writes in a facebook post titled, “My life made sense on July 9”, as follows:

“On this day, I staged a drama in my own estate where I was born and brought up. The upper Section of Kotiyagala is my estate. Bogawantalawa is our nearest town. Theatre is my life. The roots that directed me in this direction was my Kotiyagala estate

“Our drama, started in a very simple way, eventually gained popularity with a social upheaval amid huge controversies. “Layattu Koligal” has become a historical event.

“This note… is regarding the courage of our people. That miracle happened when the commitment and hopes of our drama team were shattered. My dear brother Danas was able to handle the very people who harshly threatened us not to stage the drama, in a very simple manner. It is remarkable that he is the son of the former protester, uncle Mariasusei in our estate. I was touched by the self-respect displayed by the efforts of my dear brothers Prakash and Vimalkanth who stood shoulder to shoulder with me on this occasion. Their actions should be an example to many. My phone still assures me that Adambankodi (a strong twined vine used by workers for tying firewood together and for similar purposes) is waving from now on. There are signs of an intellectual change in the future. I am inspired by being able to stage the drama disregarding those who said that it would not be allowed to be played.

“How many people have hugged and embraced me after the play? Their eyes were overflowing with happiness. The joy that was shining on the faces of the children! It is indescribable. We have to do drama for them. Our journey will continue. We will roar as a great multitude.”

Loganathan — *Director S. Loganandan enjoying warm audience response*

Even if we consider only the ambience that was described above, Layattu Koligal is a symbol of a struggle that inevitably demands for a historical change. The extraordinary form of the drama also arises from such a social requirement.

It is a story about a chicken theft. Murugan Andy (M. Ajanthan) and Andy Murugan (A. Navaneethan) are two chicken thieves. They both are competing with each other in stealing. Fowls are being stolen all over the area and people are fighting to protect their chicken from thieves. This fight is portrayed by the trio of a poor woman (S. Seedevi), her young son (S. Vasikaran) and another woman (Kalai Durasi) assisting them. Escalating the conflict between the thieves and the woman in the play, the poor woman entrusts the care of her fowl to her teenage son. The thieves try to trick him and steal the bird by giving him toys, and when they fail in this attempt, they finally threaten him with a firearm and forcibly take the chicken. A magician (S. Leelawathi), dressed in a garb that brings to mind Yankee imperialism, becomes the arbiter of the thieves’ struggle for the possession of the chicken, pulls currency notes from the chicken’s belly and pockets the notes herself. A few coins are thrown on the ground for thieves to pick up. The thieves get greedy and the magician hands them two torches and takes the chicken away.

Then the poor woman declares, with a heavy heart, “we are looking for a chicken throughout our entire lives. But what have we really lost? What we really lost is our own lives,”. It appears that the working class, including herself, who have nothing to lose but their own lives, have no choice but to fight. “We have lost our lives,” a worker on the Kerkerswald estate repeated before us, after watching the play. These very words will echo among plantation workers.

estate workers — *Women Estate Workers, S. Seedevi and S. Kalei Arasi*

Drama Director Logananthan has identified the dramatic moments of his play, such as the attempt of the two thieves to steal the same chicken, trying to deceive each other in the act, the way the woman intervenes each time to disrupt their attempt, repetition of this sequence, the competition between the thieves after the woman entrusts the protection of the chicken to her teenage son, and the manifestation of the magician and her investigation of the thieves’ complaint on the ownership of the chicken. This proves his creativity, and he has also managed to keep the audience engaged with the play from the beginning to the conclusion of it.

The theatre style of the two main actors portraying the roles of the two thieves generates humor and opposition in the audience towards those characters. For them, it recreates the vile ruling class tendencies they confront in their day-to-day lives, nurturing from their flesh, blood and sweat, which includes the trade unions. Adopting Tamil Kuththu drama tradition for the costumes, make-up, gait, etc., the director, Loganandan makes the worker-audience see the characters away from their own lives as distant spectators. Also, it is notable that the costumes and performance of the magician, who takes possession of the property taken from the workers and gives a pittance to the thieves, is created to remind one of Western imperialism. Workers’ characters are created in a form somewhat closer to the realistic tradition, but somewhere in between the realistic and stylistic theatre styles, thereby giving the audience an opportunity to see themselves.

One feels that, apart from providing energy and rhythm to the act, the spectator also is directed towards the relationships repeatedly reflecting the estate workers’ surroundings and their lives, by creatively using the rhythms from membranophones familiar in the estate life, such as Thappu (Parai – a frame drum popular in estate workers) music used in Kuththu dramas. Thappu was used two hundred years ago, during the difficult journey of South Indian workers over the sea and then to the central mountains through forests, to ward off dangerous animals and for protection from them.

The thieves represent the trade unions and various right-wing, pseudo-left fronts, covering up the role of capitalist social order, and in revealing this relationship, the drama challenges this social order. As the lives deprived to the estate workers by this social order cannot be reclaimed under capitalism, it highlights the urgent need of the working class to take matters into their own hands in determining their own destiny. For this reason, Layattu Koligal can be regarded as a realistic work of art, which ignites the life aspirations of oppressed people.

Since the emotions conveyed by the play from the beginning to the end are of a class nature, and it evokes the moods of the working class, it is a creation that represents the historical need of the current stage of social development, and it is worth considering what social conditions awakened the composer for his creation.

The artist’s statement that we have already quoted will surely provide a sufficient answer. Commemorative notes are being written on the two hundred years of plantation workers’ lives in Sri Lanka. The anniversaries make the workers re-think about themselves. During the period of nearly four years that have passed since the COVID pandemic, the crisis of the class society is getting protracted and coming to the fore in a way that cannot be suppressed. Parallel to the anniversary, this crisis provokes sentiments among the estate workers.

A school-aged plantation girl named Ishalini of Diagama, Hatton, who had been employed as a domestic worker, committed suicide by setting fire to herself in July 2021. During our discussions with the estate workers, it was clear to us that the very flames that took Ishalini’s life are still burning within the hearts of workers. Ishalini is a symbol of fate in plantation lives. The Tamil people in the plantations, who are barely getting the basic needs like education, jobs and housing fulfilled, now have to face the problems of protecting their children from all evils including drugs. The divisions created by trade unions and capitalist politics and the suppression of the struggles of the working people by these movements are being questioned. Meanwhile, the unstable capitalist governments are determined to unleash the offencive, without allowing them any democratic rights. When the brutal collapse of living conditions could not be tolerated any more, the estate youth came forward for the first time, in a campaign that their parents should receive a salary of at least one thousand rupees per day. The trade unions betrayed that struggle. The genuine artist born in the plantation and brought up in the plantation environment cannot ignore these.

Veteran actress S. Leelawathie, who is a member of a family of plantation workers, in successfully recreating this bitter truth, colors the climax of the play by her short, but brilliant performance in playing the role of the magician, who represents the evil and tyrannical ruling class. In particular, she not only proved that she is an actress who has mastered the art of acting, but also that she understood and conceptually recreated the social need expressed in the play. Therefore, her performance stands out. There is no doubt that S. Siddevi’s acting skills will remain in the memory of the audience. M. Ajanthan and M. Navaneedan who acted as thieves are showing clearly that they have the potential to achieve the skills of Leelawathie, and by mastering the craft and understanding of the social situations of the characters, they will be able to illuminate the drama even more than it presently does. We can expect that the apprentice teenager S. Vaseekaran will extend the skills he has shown in delivering the dialogues, to the other areas of play acting as well.

Navaneedan’s set design is excellent. By creating the chicken, the chicken coop and toys, especially the firearm, in a way that is clearly seen as a toy, he contributes to a powerful emphasis on the theme of the play.

A recent step taken by the ruling class to curb such creations is the arrest of stand-up comedian Nathasha Edrisooriya for an art creation. Sirima Bandaranaike’s coalition government that came to power in 1970 launched a strong attack on arts. There are many artists who have been persecuted since then. Several years ago, the education authorities have acted to prevent students from creating plays that discuss social issues by banning the play “Velicham Veliye Illai” produced by the students and teachers of St Mary’s College, Bogawantalawa even after it was selected to the final round in the National School Drama Competition. Accordingly, only the old traditional art work and their new interpretations are permitted for students, and they also restrict that the traditional written language should be used in their artistic work. Now, according to the instructions given to the judges of drama competitions, the subject range of artistic creations has been subjected to various restrictions such as ‘no politics’, ‘no insults to religion’, etc.

Similarly, governments around the world do not tolerate freedom of art and expression. Only the artist who understands that art must be freed from capitalism for the sake of the freedom of art, can enter the struggle to protect the freedom of art and expression. An ‘art’ out of touch with social reality does not in any way serve the advancement of an advanced culture. So, the only force that is capable of taking the initiative in defending the real art, which recognises the utility of social progress, is the working class which defeated the movement against Layattu Koligal. Accordingly, being organised in Rank-and-File Workers’ action committees and building a people’s revolutionary movement, extending the hand of camaraderie across all divisions and boundaries are the foremost social responsibilities of today’s artist. As Loganandan notes, “We roar in great multitudes!”

[This article was originally published in Sinhalese here on July 20, 2023]

“Layattu Koligal” (Estate Hens) – an artwork recreating the lives of workers Read More »

Free Julian Assange! Journalist pressures Australian government at a Colombo meeting

Democratic Rights, english, lead article, politics, War, World War / July 22, 2023

Our Correspondent

Yesterday (21) one journalist stood alone in expressing his protest against Australian government and took it opportunity to demand that government’s intervention to secure the release of the witch-hunted journalist Julian Assange, when the Australian High Commissioner (HC) to Sri Lanka, Paul Stephens, was delivering a speech at an event held in the Central Bank (CB) building.

The event was a certificate awarding ceremony to about two and a half a dozen journalists who had followed a macroeconomics course conducted by the CB in association with the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI). Several journalists had been sponsored by ‘Australian Aid’, while others had paid for themselves. At the event, CB governor, Nandalal Weerasinghe and SLPI Chairperson, Kumar Nadeshan were sharing the head-table together with the HC.

The Governor’s speech was followed by Stephen’s. During the HC’s whole speech for about eight minutes, Journalist Sanjaya Jayasekera, raised a placard to show, “Free Julian Assange – the Journalist of the People!”.

Following the event, Jayasekera spoke to thesocialist.LK. He is the editor of theRepublic.LK, and a writer for theSocialist.LK. He was a writer for the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), and a member of its Sri Lankan editorial panel. Presently, he is also the Chairperson of the Colombo Action Committee.

Jayasekera stated as follows:

“The Australian government is responsible for the life of the journalist Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblower website, the WikiLeaks. Assange is an Australian citizen. He has been deprived of his personal life for 14 years now, incarcerated in prison cells under extreme conditions, just for exposing the blood-soaked war crimes of the United States military and the government in Iraq and Afghanistan. This award-winning journalist is a hero of the people, as his exposure was based on his belief that the people should know the truth, as their monies are squandered without their consent for waging imperialist wars abroad, and for killing men, women and children.

“The Biden administration is seeking Assange’s extradition to the US where he will face charges of espionage that carry a life sentence and even death penalty. His only “crime” is the publication of classified documents and footage exposing the war crimes and diplomatic conspiracies of US imperialism and its allies. Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence officer, who provided these videos to Wikileaks was also kept in detention and harassed.

“After he was forcefully arrested and dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London in April 2019, Assange has been confined to UK Belmarsh prison. The Australian government has been complicit in the continued persecution, personal slander, conspiracy and spying against him by US imperialism. US used Sweden to level fabricated allegations of sexual assault against Assange, which were later dropped. Established media are part of these sins.

“Assange’s persecution is intended to terrorize all journalists and whistleblowers, anywhere in the world, by all governments.

“For more than three decades US has been waging continuous imperialist wars abroad to offset its declining global economic dominance and is now engaged in a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, with the full support of NATO and its allies including Australia. Severe austerity is implemented to place the burden of the war on the working class domestically. The war is drawing the world toward the danger of a nuclear catastrophe. This war is just a prelude to a greater war against US’s main rival, China.

“These wars have to be stopped to save humanity. That requires the building of a united global anti-war movement. Journalists have their own social responsibility in this regard. Assange is undoubtedly their role model,” Jayasekera said.

“I believe the highest task of a genuine journalist is to search for, analyze and expose the truth- the truth about the society and the world around. He should be faithful to the truth. To know the truth, he should have a thorough understanding of the mechanisms of society, and always be biased towards people and social justice. That is true journalism.”

Jayasekera also said the defence of Assange is a litmus test of those who claim to represent democratic rights.

Late March this year, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong effectively declared in the Senate that the Labor government of prime minister Anthony Albanese could do nothing to secure Assange’s freedom, due to “legal processes” in another country, contrary to its fraudulent claims of using “quiet diplomacy” to address his dire plight. These assertions contradict its own precedent practices.

Assange’s freedom is not secured by imperialist allies like Australia. “The war serves their class interests. Saving the life of Assange and freedom of journalism, as well as halting the war are matters that rest solely on the hands of the working people”, Jayasekera stated further.

It is the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the WSWS that have systematically exposed the persecution of Assange, US imperialism’s preparations for world war and called for the building of an international anti-war movement of the working class.

Free Julian Assange Now! Build the International Anti-war Movement!

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Contempt of court law: Sri Lanka Government wages war against people’s freedom of expression

english, lead article, politics / July 14, 2023

By Sanjaya Jayasekera

As part of a larger onslaught on democratic rights, Sri Lanka government of President Ranil Wickremasinghe is waging a war against free expression of the masses, specifically targeting print and digital media and online platforms. The latest of this attack is prepared by another piece of proposed legislation to reinvigorate the archaic legal mechanism of contempt of court law, long used by governments around the world to witch-hunt political opponents and stifle dissent and criticism.

The proposed law titled, “Contempt of Court, Tribunal and Institution Bill,” was published in the government gazette on June 27, on the order of the Minister of Justice, Prison Affairs and Constitutional Reforms, Wijedasa Rajapaksha. On the same date last year, cabinet of then prime minister Wickremasinghe approved the proposal to codify the law to specify the offences, the punishments for the same and to provide for the procedure in punishing for contempt.

The bill proposes its objectives to be to:

uphold the “dignity” and authority of a court, tribunal and institution,
protect the due administration of justice,
safeguard public order, public health and morals,
strike a balance between the right of expression, “fair comment” and compliance with judicial directives;
set out with precision the ambit of contempt of a court.

It provides that a person who commits an act or omission with intent to (a) bring the authority of a court, tribunal and institution and administration of justice into disrespect or disregard; or (b) interfere with, or cause prejudice to the judicial process in relation to any ongoing litigation, commits the offence of contempt of a court.

Further, as per Section 3(c) of the Bill, expressing, pronouncing or publishing any matter that is “not substantially true” which, or doing any other act which, (i) “scandalizes” or lowers the judicial authority or dignity of a court, tribunal or institution; (ii) prejudices, or interferes with, the due course of any judicial proceeding; or (iii) interferes with, or obstructs the administration of justice, commits contempt.

According to Section 3(e) thereof, “scandalizing a court, tribunal or institution, or a judge or judicial officer with intent to (i) interfere with the due administration of justice; (ii) excite dissatisfaction in the minds of the public in regard to a court, tribunal or institution; or (iii) cast public suspicion on the administration of justice is an offence. (Emphasis added)

However, it is given that any publication or expression (a) of “true and accurate facts” of any case or proceedings before a court, tribunal or institution made without malice or intention to impair the administration of justice; or (b) of “fair comments” on merits of any action or application which has been heard and decided, shall not be deemed to be contempt.

None of the words and phrases, ‘dignity’, ‘fair comment’, ‘disrespect’, ‘causing prejudice to the judicial process’, ‘scandalizing’ have been defined in the bill and therefore would imply a broader scope covering any kind of speech or activity. The contempt proceedings could also be brought against a person in order to safeguard public order, health and morals, and against publication of something “not substantially true”. How to ‘strike a balance’ between ‘fair comment’ and ‘compliance’ once again would depend on the discretion of a judge. These terms would be easily interpreted against any dissent.

Again, the judges themselves will find any free expression of opinion to amount to acts of contempt of court to excite dissatisfaction in the minds of the public in regard to a court, or to cast public suspicion on the administration of justice.

The bill encodes the associated reactionary law of sub judice, which is often used to ban or restrict any expression or discussion on an ongoing case, which could happen to be of larger public interest.

After all, fundamentally, judges themselves deciding upon contempt of itself is a clear conflict of interest situation, and violates the rule that no one should hear his own case.

Sri Lanka’s authoritarian constitution itself recognizes that fundamental rights, specifically the right to freedom of expression, could be restricted on the basis of contempt of court. It empowers the highest courts of the country, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal to punish as it wishes for contempt taken place before or outside itself or a lower court.

Under the Penal Code of Sri Lanka, the colonial legislation that codifies principal criminal offences, “whoever by words, either spoken or intended to be read, excites or attempts to excite hatred or contempt of the administration of justice” commits the offences of contempt.

Prosecutions for the aforesaid offences under the new law could be readily instituted against anybody by anyone, who could be the police, a government official or possibly any racist and religious group or individual who constitute far-right political forces hell-bent on crushing fighters against backward and reactionary social structures.

The Supreme Court or the Court of Appeal can order detention of the person charged for contempt under the Act against themselves or a lower court, or grant bail. It is a well known fact that defending a respondent in the apex courts of the island is not affordable to many and this could mean deprivation of a strong defence and longer terms in detention.

A person found guilty of contempt of court could be imposed a fine upto rupees half a million or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year, or both. On a second or subsequent conviction these thresholds would be doubled.

While the government of Sri Lanka wants to strengthen this draconian law, entrenching these constitutional restrictions, the common law jurisprudence, however limited, has affirmed that freedom of expression should not be restricted by matters of contempt, as it cuts across the standards of modern democracy, and as judicial authority is not undermined by public criticism. In the United Kingdom, there is almost no conviction to be found for scandalizing since the John Colsey case in 1931. Lord Diplock, in 1985, in Secretary of State for Defence v. Guardian Newspapers Ltd., considered the offence to be ‘virtually obsolescent’. In the United States, UK and Canada, the offence of criticizing judges and courts has been effectively a dead letter.

During the past two decades, Sri Lanka has developed a practice of increasingly using this law to prosecute and incarcerate political opponents. In mid 2018, the Supreme Court convicted Ranjan Ramanayaka, whistleblower, popular actor and then a member of parliament from the United National Party (UNP), to rigorous imprisonment for an unprecedented term of four years, for contempt, in openly asserting a public perception that “Majority in Sri Lanka are corrupted judges, corrupted lawyers. They work for money.” The judgment of the court easily avoided referring to rich jurisprudence that discourages the use of contempt law to suppress criticism of the judiciary.

In India, where contempt law is enacted, it has often been used to suppress dissent. The controversy surrounding its application to suppress expression came to limelight when, in 2020, the Supreme Court found famous activist advocate Prashant Bhushan guilty of contempt for tweeting to mean that the Indian supreme court and its past four chief justices were contributing to the destruction of the country’s democracy.

Wijedasa’s proposed legislation is intended to make this anti-democratic law a part of the country’s statute book and give otherwise a discouraged and discredited law a new lease of life, making it easily accessible to reactionary forces in the assistance of the ruling class to suppress political opposition from the media, activists, youth and the working people.

These reforms are the demand of the ruling class, not of the people. It is true to say that to enact is to always restrict some right. Whatever the ruling class may give from one hand, is taken from the other. The laws are shown to be placed to defend the good ones against bad ones, but, in fact these are rules guarding one class against the other.

However, liberal circles, think tanks and a section of the upper middle class of Colombo have quite some time been lobbying for codification of a contempt of court law. The Law Commission of Sri Lanka even proposed a draft bill in 2008. The observable silence of these groups in respect of the current bill shows their tacit approval of the law. Shown as the ultimate guardian of ‘justice’, the court’s ‘independence’ is regarded by them in high esteem, and they want it to be immune from public criticism.

Recently, a number of similar anti-democratic law reforms were temporarily retracted or receded to the backdrop amidst larger public opposition. One of such was the law proposed to institute a broadcasting regulatory commission to regulate media licensing and introduce a number of media related offences to intimidate and punish journalists and media institutions. Earlier, a harsher law was proposed to replace the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act, which has been widely used against ethnic minorities.

During and following the last year mass protests, a number of times the government used court orders to block mass protests, attack protesters with batton charges, water cannon and tear gas, and arrest and prosecute them. The public perception of the justice system including courts is nothing but its own make. The more the class antagonisms deepens, the more precarious the crisis grows, and “all that is solid melts into air”and “all that is holy is profaned”.

Court is an instrument of class rule. In respect of matters relating to people at large, no court is independent from its bias towards the ruling class. Its unquestioned authority is therefore a critical element in securing the exploitative profit system, the capitalist property relations. Expressions that can spark and direct class struggles against social inequality, when directed against the authority of this class instrument, should therefore be suppressed. Principles of sub judice and contempt of court originate from this class necessity.

History testifies that governments, anywhere in the world, want people to believe a facade that their actions are democratically legitimate. Every dictatorship, even with all its machinery to arrest, detain, imprison and kill political opponents and working class leaders, still endeavors to make all repressive measures legal, having necessary laws passed by its legislatures, to attempt to preempt class struggles. However, the more the crisis deepens, whether they have these laws in their arsenal or not, they stop at nothing to halt the working class marching toward their barracks.

Wickremasinghe government is well aware that it is sitting on a social powder-keg. It is aware that aborting the people’s right to elections, blaming the economic crisis, carries far reaching consequences in the public perception of the government, in spite of all its subsequent false claims of economic recovery. Wickremasinghe is planning to hold a presidential election prior to another social uprising that could dwarf last year’s popular struggles, in view of the severe austerity measures implemented at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which demands a strong authoritative regime to pay debts and impose its burden upon the working class.

Such mass struggles are not only a matter of time, but most critically, a matter of leadership. An independent revolutionary leadership of the working class has to be built. In view of the fact that all bourgeois nationalist alternatives have rotten to the core, including the so-called petty bourgeois political movements, the space for fascistic elements to gather a momentum within disillusioned sections of the middle class is an acute danger. Unless the working class takes command of the deep-rooted social anger to direct progressive social forces against the ruling class, social counter-revolution will take rather bloodier forms. This prospect should be defeated.

The essential first step in this perspective is for the working class to take matters of their lives into their own hands. Laws for the toiling masses have to be determined democratically by them through their own independent committees. They should convene a constituent assembly of the working class to abolish all repressive and communal laws, and to draw up a new constitution for themselves. Such a constitution should be based on principles of social equality, in order to ensure genuine democracy and reorganize the society for the benefit of the oppressed, not for the profit of a tiny layer of a parasitic class.

Contempt of court law: Sri Lanka Government wages war against people’s freedom of expression Read More »

SEP-SL Assistant Secretary Condemns the CAC Campaign for Freedom of Art and Expression

english, politics / July 1, 2023

By Nandana Nannetti

On June 17, the Assistant Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), Sri Lanka, Comrade Saman Gunadasa participated in the online (Zoom) meeting held by the Colombo Action Committee (CAC). The meeting was organized to clarify the political, theoretical and organizational issues required in the fight to free the political prisoners including comedian Nathasha Edrisooriya, to defend freedom of art and expression and against government repression. There is no doubt that one would expect that, in attending the meeting, Saman Gunadasa would make an important contribution representing the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). But soon it was made clear that his intention was to disrupt the entire discussion.

Saman was enraged by CAC president Sanjaya Jayasekera’s insistence on the necessity to fight to build an international alliance of workers’ action committees, for which, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) has given the initiative. Sanjaya arrived at this conclusion through a detailed objective analysis of the economic, political and historical factors behind Nathasha’s arrest.

Saman intervened, declaring the following: “Socialist Equality Party is the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Sanjaya Wilson Jayasekara has been expelled from SEP for breaking SEP discipline.” In keeping with his practice of bludgeoning with any blunt weapon, Saman referred to a certain blog page reposting theSocialist.LK’s articles. Deliberately distorting facts, he claimed that, “he [Sanjaya] is using a blog called ICFI-1953 to promote him. This blog publicly accuses the International Committee.” This is a shameless attempt to seek to call upon a perfect lie for his assistance. But it was clear that Saman did not possess any real political argument against Sanjaya.

“We have launched a national and international campaign on Nathasha Edrisooriya through the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS),” Saman announced. But there was nothing more to say about the campaign he refers to, beyond the fact that they have published two articles in WSWS, one in Sinhala and later another one in English. They described the incident of Nathasha’s arrest and expressed a lukewarm protest. That is because the party regime has not yet even attempted to discuss this matter at least among the party’s own membership – let alone a campaign among the public.

Later, Saman intervened again to say as follows:

“These comrades may have an idea about where religiosity and racism are leading to. It is required to have a clear picture of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Whom does it represent? What is its program? This meeting has been organized by a group working against its (ICFI’s) program; working to suppress it; working to slander its program… It is necessary to expose it as a basic step in the fight to defend Natasha Edirisuriya.

“The International Committee of the Fourth International organizes the working class.” Saying that it is “presenting a scientific program and fighting for it”, Saman reiterated that “as part of it, our struggle is to fight against all pseudo-left movements with programs of this type“.

According to Saman, the main criterion that determines the class character of CAC is the fact that two comrades who were victimized by the conspiracies of the SEP regime are in it. He had nothing to say about the fact that a number of comrades, who are active SEP members, are envaged in that committee too, since the struggle to build the CAC last year. Saman had nothing to say about the essential points of CAC’s political analysis, political positions, program and class base etc.

However, it has been affirmed through his intervention that, although the SEP bureaucracy initially acted upon the assumption that the possibility of Colombo Action Committee emerging as a genuine revolutionary organization of the working class is negligible and it can be ignored, in the context of it being established within the working-class movement, they are now convinced that they can no longer ignore it. They are compelled to go all out to destroy it.

CAC was not only founded upon the perspective of the International Committee from its inception, but also it sent the report of its establishment to the WSWS for publishing. The report was presented to the editor-in-chief of its Sri Lanka section, comrade K. Ratnayake, and his reaction was that ” [w]e are not publishing the report you have sent to the WSWS because it is a report from a committee you have formed without the approval of the Socialist Equality Party.” He has not been able to provide any other reason for his decision until this date, and still maintains his subjective opposition despite the objective fact that it (CAC) was founded on the basis of the statement published by SEP on July 20, 2022. In contrast to this behavior, the July 20, 2022 perspective states that, “The foundations for the Democratic and Socialist Congress need to be laid by the workers and rural toilers themselves through the establishment of action committees…” The statement, towards the end of it, further affirmed that, “[t]he Socialist Equality Party is prepared and determined to assist and provide the political direction necessary for the development of the mass movement for the establishment of the Congress.” Thus, it is clear who has acted against the party, and the policies of the International Committee.

Marxism is a science. Science begins its task by distinguishing between the ‘reality’ revealed by proximity senses and perception, and the ‘reality’ developed through the process of complex and extended analysis and theoretical abstraction. The SEP regime, including Saman and Ratnayake, has not cared about this principle at all in tackling the said question.

As we explained in this very meeting, Saman’s aim was, under the guise of opposing the CAC, to undermine the struggle which the CAC had taken to the fore with Nathasha’s imprisonment. Although the words, “willingness and determination to provide necessary support and guide in political direction” implied adherence to the policy of the International Committee, the majority of the SEP regime always subordinated the Action Committee program to their own subjective responses rather than to the rich historical experiences of the Trotskyist working-class movement. As reflected from their own actions, they do not believe that the working class can build its own organizations. This is why the Action Committee for the Defense of Freedom of Art and Expression (ACDAE), which started in 2019, was disbanded, and instead of fighting for convincing about the necessity of action committees and leading the workers to build action committees, they replaced themselves for action committees and then unsuccessfully called the workers to join them.

ACDAE led two very successful political campaigns. Comrade Sanjaya was then its president. These campaigns were able to win exceptional support from workers, artists, intellectuals and youth. The party regime consciously intervened and dissolved it. The regime argued that the formation of action committees was part of the recruitment of members into the party, and that they were formed from among those who agreed with the party’s perspectives. These views have nothing to do with the principles of the International Committee and Trotskyism. Accordingly, Saman’s intervention, rather than being simply opposing those who have been ‘expelled’ from the party, and a matter of mere subjective enmity, weighs more.

As stated in the CAC’s statement with the heading, “Free Comedian Nathasha Edrisooriya!”, “she has been hunted, because holding free opinions, appearing for them and socializing them through artistic creations are challenging the existing social hegemony. Accusations of insulting Buddhism, destroying religious harmony and insulting girls’ colleges have been raised against her. Its aim is not only to trample on the freedom of art creation, speech and expression, but also to crush in the bud the feelings of equality that are generally burning in the oppressed people and the emancipatory feelings that arise from women themselves against the capitalist pressure placed on women”.

The article published in the Sinhala section of the WSWS on June 1, on the same day the CAC statement was issued, testifies to the shallowness of their approach to the problem. It wrote; “the proximate cause of the campaign against her for defaming Buddhism, was her recent stand-up comedy program which satirized a legend in Buddhist literature and the ethics of female students’ conduct in Buddhist schools.” We feel that these two paragraphs represent the exact difference between us and the SEP adopted line.

Further, the campaign carried out by CAC is also against the above beliefs of the party regime. Accordingly, the party regime attacks the initiative taken by CAC and, despite what they think they are doing, their actions will essentially serve the interests of the capitalist class. This occurs in a situation in which the ruling class cannot survive without the support of an organization with a revolutionary heritage, like the SEP. In the face of the government’s intensifying attack on the working class, a revolutionary party cannot continue to exist as a revolutionary party without basing itself more and more on principles, and its own historical foundations, and fighting to actively seize the leadership of the class struggle. The lesson of history is that, whenever this task is avoided, the party will be bereft of the working class interests, bewildered and intimidated by the class struggle, and will play an extremely vicious role in crushing emerging revolutionary movements. That is why the SEP should take steps to analyze this situation on a historical basis.

Raising the consciousness of the working class is the task of the revolutionary party and it is neither just a journalistic task, nor a mere propaganda task. Man has always changed himself in order to change the world, and anyone who rejects this theory does not serve the working class. The contrary is an impossibility.

[This article was originally published in Sinhalese on June 25, 2023]

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