The JVP unions are desperately trying to prevent the working class discussing the Socialist Equality Party’s call for independent action committees and its socialist and internationalist program.
The unions are fearful that the rising wave of strikes and protests will lead to a major confrontation with the Wickremesinghe regime and the bourgeois state.
Wednesday’s strikes and protests powerfully indicate the determination of workers to fight the government’s social attacks. By contrast, the trade unions did everything they could limit to the industrial action.
The unions are attempting to hoodwink workers with demagogic denunciations of President Wickremesinghe and appeals for cosmetic changes to his government’s austerity measures.
Sri Lankan trade unions are attempting to dissipate rising mass anger against the government and its escalating social attacks through calling separate isolated actions and promoting illusions that the government can pressured to withdraw new income tax increases.