The government’s ongoing attempts to postpone the elections is a part of its broader attacks on the social and democratic rights of working people who are beginning to rise up against its brutal austerity measures.
Wickremesinghe justified already-imposed IMF demands, declared that there would be no reduction in the new pay-as-you-earn taxes, and outlined future attacks.
Last week residents of Meethotamulla, a low-income working-class area, vehemently denounced successive governments, angrily explaining how they were attempting to deal with the social disaster they now confronted.
On the same day Jeevan Thondaman became a member of cabinet, the Ceylon Workers Congress announced a local electoral seat-sharing pact in the Wickremesinghe’s United National Party.
The SEP is the only party in Sri Lanka that fights for the unified mobilisation of the working class on an international socialist perspective and against the communal divisions whipped up by the ruling elites.