Sri Lanka: The Regime in Crisis

lanka Bandaranaikr REGIME IN CRISIS by BALA TAMPOE There is a good deal of speculation in Sri Lanka today as to whether the legislative elections, scheduled for. the middle of 1977 according to the provisions of the constitution, will actually take place or whether the government will postpone them, as the Gandhi regime did in India. The possibility of early elections cannot be excluded either, with the government seeking to cash in on the temporary increase in its prestige which resulted from the conference of so-called nonaligned countries, recently held in Sri Lanka's capital, Colambo. The political influence of the parties in the government coalition (the Sri Lanka Freedom party and the Communist party) has seriously declined among the popular masses, but it is the United National party, the rightwing opposition party, that has primarily benefited from this. The expulsion of the reformist Lanka Sama Samaja party (LSSP- Ceylon Equal Society party) from the govemment coalition deprived this coalition of its "left" cover. But the circumstances under which the expulsion occurred have not at all contributed to once again stimulating illusions in the "leftist" charocter of the LSSP, nor have they lent any credibility to this party's call for a "united socialist front. " On the contrary, instances of decomposition of the LSSP have spread since it was expelled from the government. Thus, at the beginning of August Dasili Amerasinghe, editor-in-chief of the weekly Nation and member of the Central Committee of the LSSP, resigned from the party to join Prime Minister Bandaranaike's party, bringing his journal with him. The LSSP was thus compelled to begin publishing a new organ, entitled Socialist Nation. The political decay of the old leadership of the LSSP has proceeded no less clearly, in spite of the party's passage to the opposition. Several leaders of the Federal party (which is Tamil nationalist), including some members of parliament, are now being prosecuted on the basis of repressive legislation enacted under the state of emergency. Their "crime" is to have issued a leaflet "subversive" to the constitution. Their lawyers have challenged the validity both of the emergency legislation and of the constitution. The spokesman for the loyal opposition, Colvin R. Da Silva of the LSSP, immediately rose in parliament to defend the bourgeois constitution and the repressive legislation and presented the speeches of lawyers and parliament members representing an oppressed national minority (even if they are bourgeois) as threats to the people! The current rise of workers combativity has been reflected in many strikes and demonstrations, some of the largest of which have involved the Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU). For example, the CMU waged an important struggle to prevent its members employed in the firms administering the plantations from being sacked after the nationalization of these firms, which was decided on last March. A mass meeting in the center of Colombo on May 27 accompanied by a strike of all members of the CMU was attacked by the police. But the attack was unable to prevent thousands of workers from assembling. On July 21 there was a twenty-four-hour general strike of the employees of the Ceylon Estates Staff Union, with which the CMU has established friendly relations. The influence of the CMU among the workers and employees of the plantations has grown as a result of these activities. The growing militant activity of sectors of the working class is creating problems not only for the LSSP but also for the SLFP. On the eve of the Colombo conference of nonaligned countries there was a brief strike of postal and telephone workers. If was "suspended" on the basis of emergency legislation and under the threat of arrest of the leaders of the strike. One of the two unions that organized this strike was affiliated to the trade-union federation controlled by the SLFP. It was disaffiliated by the federation for having called the strike. The revolutionary Marxists of Sri Lanka plan to participate independently in the electoral campaign by presenting some candidates of the Revolutionary Marxist party (Ceylonese section of the Fourth International), some candidates of the CMU, and some independent workers candidates upholding a common platform of reestablishment of democratic rights and struggle for transitional demands. August 10, 1976