Local government election in Sri Lanka: Support SEP campaign against austerity and war! Fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government!

 

Local government election in Sri Lanka: Support SEP campaign against austerity and war! Fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government!

By
the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka)

9 January 2018

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka is standing candidates in local government elections to be held on February 10. The SEP will contest three local bodies—Kayts in the war-ravaged northern Jaffna Peninsula, Ambagamuwa near Hatton in the central tea plantation district and Kolonnawa in Colombo’s suburbs—fielding 16, 24 and 21 candidates respectively.

The SEP candidates will be fighting for the international socialist program needed by workers, youth and the poor, who are increasingly coming to struggle against the attacks of the government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. We are campaigning to mobilise the working class in the fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government, independently of every faction of the capitalist class, including the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and various pseudo-left groups.

The election has been declared amid widespread anti-government unrest among workers, the rural poor and youth that underscores the explosive social and political conditions on the island. Not a single day passes without such protests and struggles. All the parties of the political establishment are determined to prevent this developing movement from challenging capitalist rule, and to divert it into impotent appeals to the powers-that-be.

In July, a strike by Petroleum Corporation workers impacted throughout the country. In November, an occupation by Hambantota Port workers in December 2016 against retrenchments was revived. Tens of thousands of railway and postal workers also went on strike, demanding salary…

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