Sri Lanka’s elections two dark years after the revolution

Two years ago, the world bore witness to extraordinary events in Sri Lanka. On 9 July 2022, the Sri Lankan masses swept aside the heavy cordon of police outside the presidential palace as if it was little more than a cobweb. To the astonishment of the world, Gotabaya Rajapaksa had to flee in a panic.

This summer, those marvellous images have circulated repeatedly on social media. They were invoked first by young Kenyans who stormed the parliament building in Nairobi on 25 June; then by the Bangladeshi masses in the run up to 5 August, when the Prime Minister’s residence was taken and the dictator forced to flee; and finally, a third time, by Indonesian students who also attempted to storm the parliament building in Jakarta on 22 August.

[This article was written collaboratively between the comrades of the Sri Lankan Marxist organisation Forward and the editors of In Defence of Marxism.]

The example was a powerful one that has had an enduring effect around the world. In 2022, the ruling classes everywhere were horrified. Parliaments, presidential palaces, prime ministerial residences – the ruling class teaches that these places are sacred and inviolable.

But the Sri Lankan masses rudely showed how easily the people can eject the residents of these buildings when their minds are set on it. But once the masses ejected the Rajapaksas, the question was posed, who will take power? The masses had power at their fingertips but were not conscious of the fact. There was no revolutionary party present to make conscious the unconscious striving of the masses for power.

The ruling class, which is bound together by a clear class consciousness of its common interests, far more so than the working class, soon regrouped. Events did not stop in 2022. Two years later, and Sri Lanka is finally heading for elections which the ruling class has tried to prevent at all costs.

Although the outcome is uncertain, the masses will be looking to give the old ruling clique a bloody nose. For the first time, it is quite possible that a party other than those descending from the duopoly that has ruled Sri Lanka since independence could take the powerful presidency.

The National People’s Power coalition, at the heart of which is the old JVP, which long ago called itself ‘Marxist-Leninist’, could be propelled from the fourth party in parliament to the presidency. This would be a political earthquake, although the party has clearly been positioning itself as a ‘respectable’ party that would safeguard the interests of capital and imperialism.

What perspective does this open up? Two years after the ‘aragalaya’ (‘struggle’), what lessons does Sri Lanka hold for the revolutionary masses around the world?

Sri Lanka after the aragalaya

During the aragalaya two years ago, the masses had a clear idea of what they were against. They were against the unbearable conditions, the long queues for bare essentials, the blackouts, the runaway inflation.

They were against the clique that they saw as responsible for this economic mess: the Rajapaksa clan. They hated them for their syphoning of the nation’s wealth, their racist demagogy, their murderous campaign against journalists, their use of violent goons against opposition.

But what was going to replace the Rajapaksa dynasty once it was thrown out? On that point, there wasn’t a single, clear opinion among the masses.

During the aragalaya two years ago, the masses had a clear idea of what they were against / Image: AntanO, Wikimedia Commons

A decisive factor was missing. There was not a revolutionary party that could explain to the masses in struggle what needed to be done.

To achieve fundamental change, the masses had to seize power and uproot the system, not merely the Rajapaksa clan that stood at the apex of this system. In fact, the masses had power – it was at their fingertips. They swept away Mahinda’s goons like a man swatting a gnat. They took the presidential palace without the least effort. The job was to make the masses conscious of their power, to organise it, and to declare the regime deposed.

Instead, there was palpable confusion in the movement. Some of the middle-class layers called for a ‘sensible’ government that could strike a deal for debt restructuring with the IMF in order to ‘rebuild’ the economy. This meant returning the country to the tender embrace of the same creditors that had brought it to ruin.

Without an alternative, when it felt like Sri Lanka was falling off the cliff, such an idea had a naive appeal for a certain layer. “Let us just get a bailout, stop the freefall, and discuss the next steps once things stabilise.”

The ruling class suffered no such confusion. Bound together by a keen instinct and consciousness of their common class interests, they closed ranks to guarantee their system’s survival.

When Mahinda Rajapaksa was ousted as prime minister before his brother Gotabaya had to flee, parliament nominated a new prime minister. But parliament continued to be dominated by the Rajapaksa’s party, the SLPP. They couldn’t simply pick a Rajapaksa loyalist. Such a manoeuvre would be too transparent.

Parliament instead appointed Ranil Wickremesinghe, the leader of a party that had once been the traditional party of the Sri Lankan ruling elite, the UNP, first as prime minister then as president. It is worth noting that Ranil failed to win a single district seat and only got one National List MP seat in the 2020 general election. 

Ranil had previously come into conflict with the Rajapaksas. That made him the ideal candidate: a darling of the liberals, distinct enough from the Rajapaksas but still tied to them by the same class interests. The Rajapaksa gang put aside their minor personal ambitions to save the existing order when faced with a crisis that challenged their whole system.

The pact suited both parties. The Rajapaksas believed their ally, without a party of his own, would be a puppet dependent on their party machine. As for Ranil, a seasoned politician, he was only too glad to receive this unexpected political lifeline at a nadir in his political career.

More importantly for both, this manoeuvre helped confuse and demobilise the masses, whose attitude towards Ranil, especially among the middle classes, was not as clear cut as it was towards the Rajapaksas.

A nightmare for the masses

What then was the result of the revolution? Let us be clear: the situation is far worse for the working class and the broad masses than it was before 2022! The Sri Lankan masses have been cruelly punished for not going beyond a mere reshuffle at the top.

The Rajapaksas, it is true, were forced to retire from the main stage. But the revolution was not able even to break their power. In fact, they have merely been forced to operate from behind the scenes, at least for now.

And, working hand-in-glove with Ranil, they have spent the past two years shoving the most monstrous IMF-dictated measures onto the workers and poor. The ‘Ranil Rajapaksa’ regime, as it has contemptuously come to be known, has viciously put the boot into the poor and oppressed masses, while grovelling at the feet of the capitalists and creditors.

The ‘Ranil Rajapaksa’ regime has viciously put the boot into the poor and oppressed masses / Image: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Wikimedia Commons

The remaining state assets have been sold off; the pension and welfare funds of the people, including the EPF and ETF, have been looted under the guise of internal debt restructuring; they’ve introduced heavy, regressive taxes on the working masses; they’ve applied labour laws that strip workers of their most elementary rights; they’ve widened repressive laws, and so on, and so forth.

As for the rich, they have been treated with kid gloves. The regime has failed to collect Rs. 1.13 trillion in taxes, fines and interest as of 31 December 2023. Ten liquor manufacturing companies alone have failed to pay more than Rs. 6.78 billion in liquor taxes.

Needless to say, the government has let big business get off scot-free. Indeed, they’ve added to this all kinds of tax reliefs and ‘incentives’ for investors. They’ve justified this with all the classic arguments of the neoliberal free-marketeers: to stimulate growth, to ensure a recovery, we must cut costs for investors and create ‘investment-friendly’ market conditions.

And yet, despite their huge concessions to investors, the write-off of loans and taxes, and the crushing of the working class into penury, there has been no increase in investment in Sri Lanka.

In fact, many apparel factories have been closing down or else recruitment has been put on hold. The reason is quite clear: there are no new profitable markets for these companies to exploit. The apparel industry in particular is suffering from a massive crisis of overproduction.

This gives the lie to the idea that the massive austerity cuts, state asset stripping, and impoverishment of workers that the Ranil Rajapaksa regime is carrying out has anything to do with attracting investment. It is about one thing and one thing alone: guaranteeing the imperialists their pound of flesh.

What has life become for millions of Sri Lankans? A third of children are malnourished. One meagre meal a day is now the norm. Farmers cannot afford fertiliser or food. Middle-class youth dream of just one thing: escaping the country. The mood is one of desperate, bitter resentment. For the past two years, it has been expressed in a daily struggle of families merely to survive.

A rare avenue for discontent

In 2022, the Sri Lankan masses tested strength against the ruling class using the highest means available to them: insurrectionary struggle. Such methods pose the question of power directly and are not to be taken up lightly. The Sri Lankan masses, however, entered the struggle boldly, heroically even, but without clear ideas, without programme, without a party.

They suffered a harsh defeat. The revenge of the ruling class is the price of defeat.

In 2022, the Sri Lankan masses tested strength against the ruling class using the highest means available to them / Image: Nazly Ahmed

The exhaustion from that exertion has been compounded by a relentless economic crisis that seems to show no sign of abating. The illusion that a deal with the IMF would pave the way for a return to ‘normality’ has been harshly shattered. This is the new ‘normal’.

While there have been protests against regressive taxes and state privatisations, they have remained small on account of repression, but above all because workers are clinging to their jobs and the crust of bread it guarantees. Industrial action is rendered near-impossible in a crisis of such depth.

On the surface, Sri Lanka is quiet. And yet the rule of the Ranil Rajapaksa regime is far from secure, and they can sense the real mood.

Compared to the method of insurrection and even strike action, participation in democratic elections represents one of the lowest and most passive forms of struggle. Yet, checked on every other front, and thrown back by defeat, this remains one of the few avenues open for the masses to express their bitter, despairing rage.

All the more vigilantly therefore have the Sri Lankan ruling class scrambled to block every possibility of an electoral contest. The few democratic channels that existed prior to 2022, which like safety valves allowed the masses to let off a bit of steam now and then, have been sealed shut.

The president is now completely without a mandate. The hated parliament elected in 2020 continues to meet with its supermajority for the Rajapaksas’ SLPP, wildly out of keeping with the mood in society. The provincial councils have ceased to exist and there have been no new elections to them. Local elections last year were actively sabotaged by Ranil himself.

They fear anything that could provide a focal point for the mood of anger in society. They also fear that an electoral contest could tear apart the tenuous unity that the ruling class forged to defend their system back in 2022.

They’ve been proven right on both counts, although going into these elections, none of the main parties represent anything fundamentally different for the Sri Lankan masses. Unable to delay things any longer, despite legal challenges that attempted to unconstitutionally postpone elections, they were forced to hold presidential elections on 21 September.

Cracks in the regime

The announcement of elections caused an immediate split in the Rajapaksa camp. The MPs of their party, the SLPP, knowing the verdict the masses would give to the Rajapaksas’ rule, have split into two camps.

Some have remained loyal to the powerful clan. Others have jumped ship and gone with Ranil in order to secure their political future after these elections, and they’ve taken most of the SLPP electoral machine with them.

Going into these elections, the Rajapaksas faced a lose-lose scenario. Either they refuse to stand a candidate and back Ranil and fail to put a marker down for future parliamentary elections, or they stand one of their own and face certain humiliation. They’ve decided to stand the young princeling, Namal Rajapaksa, son of the hated Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The masses will also be out to punish Ranil Wickremesinghe / Image: public domain

They will get a drubbing. But the masses will also be out to punish Ranil Wickremesinghe. But what alternative can they vote for? On the one hand, there is Sajith Premadasa of the SJB, who until 2019 was part of the same party as Ranil.

All these candidates are drawn from fragments of the two main parties that have dominated Sri Lanka since independence, the UNP (from which the SJB is a splinter) and the SLFP (from which the Rajapaksas’ SLPP split). More than this, they are connected by direct links to the very same families that have dominated Sri Lanka for decades.

Besides the Rajapaksas, Ranil himself is the nephew of the brutal former president J.R. Jayawardana, and Sajith is son of the infamous former president Ranasinghe Premadasa, who slaughtered 60,000 people under his rule.

None of them represent anything different.

No alternative on the ‘left’

The wildcard in this election is a party that at present holds fourth place in parliament. That party is the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, at the core of which is the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) party.

The JVP formerly regarded itself as a ‘Marxist-Leninist’ party. But its trajectory has been firmly to the right. Its leader has apologised for the party’s left-wing past and its participation in two insurrectionary risings in the 1970s and in the mid-1980s. Meanwhile, far from appealing to working-class voters, the NPP is keen to appeal to more conservative middle class layers, particularly from the intelligentsia, by emphasising that it is not the JVP.

It would have seemed a very unlikely party to take up the mantle of representing the interests of capital in Sri Lanka, but today big business and imperialism are looking upon it quite differently. Its leadership has had many very friendly audiences with ambassadors of imperialist powers and with the representatives of imperialist financial institutions.

It is clear to see why. They are not talking about any kind of social transformation. They’ve maintained an ambiguous position on the IMF conditions, although one of their executive committee members stated clearly, “we have to move forward with the IMF”. They are in favour of privatisation as long as it is done “transparently”. They are silent on the plunder of the nation by foreign multinationals and the flight of capital.

In short, they place all blame on the old ruling cliques that have ruled Sri Lanka since independence, and on corruption. They present themselves as a safer, cleaner, more ‘respectable’ pair of hands than the parties descended from Sri Lanka’s traditional duopoly.

The party thus offers no clear alternative to the existing system, and for this reason it has failed to generate serious, positive enthusiasm. Being the only major party outside the old SLFP-UNP family, it is likely to mop up a lot of the anti-establishment anger bubbling in the country.

The JVP formerly regarded itself as a ‘Marxist-Leninist’ party / Image: Machang, Wikimedia Commons

However, the fact is this will remain a negative, anti-‘Ranil Rajapaksa’ vote. And for this reason, while the NPP is projected to do well in the cities, many in rural areas look likely to vote for the SJB for the same reason, given that the NPP offers no positive reason why they ought to vote for them instead.

Among the Tamil and Muslim communities too, there is a long memory of the party’s record of Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism, and their support for the crimes the Mahinda Rajapaksa government carried out against the Tamils in the 2000s. Much of the anger among these layers will end in a negative vote for the SJB too.

Prospects

Once more, the Sri Lankan people are attempting to direct a blow against the hated clique at the head of this system. Today they do so in a much tougher, much more bitter environment, while suffering under the blows of a defeated revolution and a harsh crisis.

But still there is no party which clearly directs that anger against the regime, and as such, whatever the outcome of the presidential elections, the Sri Lankan masses will pass through a new school.

Should the NPP or the SJB clinch victory, they will carry out the same fundamental policies as the Ranil Rajapaksa gang. The lesson will be clear: you can replace this or that politician, but as long as the system they defend remains, you will continue to be exploited and trodden into the dirt.

This will lay the basis for new struggles. The masses are being kept down by a deep crisis right now, but rage is building in the depths of society. It may require a new recovery to impel the masses towards open struggle once more, to turn despairing rage into revolutionary rage.

When that comes – and even the deepest crisis must end in a ‘recovery’ of sorts at a certain stage – it will be much more fierce. The masses will be fighting to claw back what they have lost. And they will have shed much of the naivety that characterised the aragalaya two years ago – about the IMF, about the possibility of just replacing this or that individual or party, about the viability of the very system.

But we must tell the truth: until such time as a revolutionary party is built with a programme of expropriating the capitalist class and overturning the whole system; until such time as the masses are led in struggle by such a party, it will be impossible to deliver a decisive blow against the ruling class.

The vanguard of the working class and the youth are learning this lesson, painfully and step by step. To the revolutionary workers and youth of Bangladesh, Kenya and the world we say: you have the chance to learn from the experience of the Sri Lankan masses, gained at such a high price. You must put it into effect, and begin the process of building a revolutionary communist party now.