with P.D. Saranapala a veteran of the 1980 general strike, leader of the Socialist Party of Sri Lanka, secretary of the Government United Management Assistance Union, and treasurer of the Socialist People’s Forum, along with other local activists.
Two months after WIN’s last meeting on the current catastrophe in Sri Lanka, there has been absolutely no respite. The last remaining foreign exchange reserves have dried up, and with them supplies of food, cooking oil, petrol and medicines. There are day-long power cuts. The island is ablaze with protests amounting to a countrywide mass uprising. Demonstrators have been brutally attacked and several killed. At one point an indefinite general strike was called. Ruling party offices have been besieged by angry crowds, and the house of the now sacked prime minister – the president’s brother – burned to the ground. With the collapse of a government exclusively composed of members of the corrupt ruling Rajapaksa dynasty, only the universally hated president Gotabaya survives, the victorious butcher of the Tamil minority, barricaded inside a naval base surrounded by troops and barely clutching on to office.Even now that a shop-soiled five-times previous incumbent has finally been found to replace the disgraced former prime minister, there can be no hope of an emergency IMF loan until a viable and stable government is in place – all the more so now that the government has suddenly defaulted on its previous debts. And any aid package could only be granted on strict condition of a “restructuring” of the economy that would inflict further savage cuts in public spending and renewed attacks on living standards.If ever a country was crying out for socialist revolution, it is Sri Lanka today. We therefore welcome again the opportunity to hear a leading trade union militant throw light on the way out of the crisis.