Wije Dias, the candidate of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the November 17 Sri Lankan presidential elections, will speak this Sunday at a public meeting in Chennai, the capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Dias, who has been a member of the international Trotskyist movement for four decades, is the SEP general secretary and a member of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board.

The meeting will outline the internationalist perspective fought for by the Sri Lankan SEP and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). As the SEP election manifesto explains: “The cornerstone of the SEP’s campaign is internationalism. The SEP is standing not simply to win votes in Sri Lanka but to initiate a discussion throughout the Indian subcontinent on the necessity for workers to adopt a socialist program and perspective.”

The central issue confronting the working class today in every country is the explosive eruption of American imperialism. Under the banner of the “war on terror”, the US has already subjugated Afghanistan and Iraq as part of its drive to establish its domination over key strategic areas of the globe. This turn to militarism is not a sign of strength but a desperate attempt to resolve the fundamental contradiction of capitalism—between world economy and the outmoded nation-state system—by asserting the hegemony of one state—the US—over all its rivals.

Washington’s encouragement of “peace” in Sri Lanka and Kashmir is part of the same imperialist strategy. The conflicts in both areas now pose a threat to burgeoning American economic and strategic interests in the region. Far from bringing peace, US interventions in South Asia constitute a profoundly destabilising influence that is laying the basis for future wars.

Across the Indian subcontinent, the representatives of the ruling classes, and their Stalinist and “left” apologists, have fallen into line with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” seeking to exploit it for their own purposes.

We invite workers, young people and intellectuals to attend the SEP’s public meeting in Chennai to discuss the necessity for a genuine socialist strategy based on the development of an independent political movement of the working class to oppose to war, mounting social inequality and attacks on basic democratic rights.

Venue:
Tamara Hall, 3rd Floor, Sun Plaza Complex, 39 G.N. Chetty Road [near the Anna flyover]

Date and time:
Sunday, November 6 at 10 am.