The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) will hold public meetings in Colombo, Jaffna and Matara as part of our campaign for the May 6 local government (LG) elections in Sri Lanka.
The SEP is fielding a total of 34 candidates on slates in Karainagar Divisional Council, the war-ravaged Jaffna district and the Kolonnawa Urban Council in the suburbs of Colombo.
The party’s election statement, which outlines a socialist and internationalist program for the working class, has already been issued and is being discussed by our candidates with workers and young people.
The SEP and the IYSSE are the only organisations telling the truth to the working people.
The SEP opposes the nationalist demagogy of President Dissanayake and his Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP), the opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and other parties, including the fake-left Frontline Socialist Party-led People’s Struggle Alliance. The SEP explains that the burning problems facing working people cannot be solved on a national basis or under the capitalist system.
The SEP was the only party that warned the working class about the right-wing, pro-imperialist nature of the JVP/NPP during last year’s elections. From its inception Dissanayake’s government, with the direct and indirect support of all the opposition parties, has focused on enforcing the International Monetary Fund’s brutal austerity measures.
The working class is not just facing the JVP/NPP regime and the Sri Lanka capitalist class but global finance capital and all imperialist agencies.
Sri Lanka’s local elections are occurring amid a deepening global capitalist crisis, with US imperialism at its centre. US President Trump is using fascist methods, expelling immigrants, eliminating social services, launching trade war on all countries and escalating war preparations, particularly against China, which is driving the planet towards a catastrophic Third World War.
The working class needs a program grounded on Trotskyism, the Marxism of today, to fight capitalist barbarism. The SEP urges workers to break from all capitalist parties and their abetters and independently mobilise their political and industrial strength and unite with the international working class on a socialist program. They must rally in support of the rural masses and develop a broad-based nationwide struggle against the Dissanayake government’s austerity measures and attacks on democratic and social rights.
The SEP/IYSSE election campaign fights to educate workers of the necessity to establish their own independent action committees in all workplaces, and for small farmers to organise similar committees, in united action for their social and democratic rights.
This perspective is a part of the SEP’s call for the establishment of a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses, based on democratically elected delegates from these action committees. Our perspective is to take forward the struggle for a workers’ and farmers’ government to refashion society to meet the needs of the majority and as part of the fight for international socialism.
We urge workers, youth, intellectuals and WSWS readers to attend these important public meetings and participate in the broadest possible discussion of the party’s political program.
We also urge you to contact the SEP and IYSSE and give the widest support to our campaign.
Jaffna
Meeting venue: YMCA Auditorium (Near Government Agent Office) in Jaffna
Date and time: April 7 at 3.30 p.m.
Colombo
Meeting venue: Colombo Public Library Auditorium
Date and time: April 9 at 4.30 p.m.
Matara
Meeting venue: Post Office Auditorium in Matara
Date and time: April 26 at 3.00 p.m.
Our contact numbers and email address:
WhatsApp number: 0773562327
Email: wswscmb@sltnet.lk