Lessons from the Sri Lankan Mass Rebellion

Exactly one month ago, on July 9, 2022, the world was shocked by the rolling events in Sri Lanka. The people sipped into the Presidential Palace, the place that should be most guarded safely and is a sacred symbol of power. Viral photos and videos show how the people swim soothing in the president's pool. The people are doing well in the presidency. They admire the disgust of the president's garage with their luxury cars. Workers throughout Sri Lanka watched this with great joy and pride, but not so with the Sri Lankan ruling class – and also the whole world - trembling in fear, that their luxury home and their power are no longer safe.

The action of the President's Palace, which ended with President Gota Rajapaksa's lengser, is a continuation of the large mass movement that has been taking place since March yesterday. Backing up this revolutionary movement is the crisis of Sri Lankan capitalism which has destroyed the lives of tens of millions of working people. Sri Lankan workers have shown their militancy and courage. Now the ruling class – with their politicians, their experts, and the reformists who followed them – are busy trying to form a government “ national unity ” to replace the Rajapaksa dynasty. Their aim is to deceive the people from their victory and save the whole order of capitalism.

Since the pandemic, Sri Lanka has been in a severe economic crisis, which in turn has caused intense social turmoil. Extreme privatization led to a decrease in salaries and a severe increase in prices of goods. Power cuts that reach 13-15 hours push people into despair. Seeing governments that are incompetent in dealing with their problems, working people from all walks of life protest on a large scale. The action was so great that resistance from government supporters actually sparked the anger of the masses who destroyed the authorities' offices, homes and luxury cars.

Nevertheless, the empty revolutionary leader brought the masses to confusion. Trade unions and left-wing parties only play a passive role in action. The masses continue to reject all efforts for reform and collaboration with the capitalist class. However, they are still not aware of their power to seize power into their hands. This situation makes the masses lose the great momentum that has been achieved. This article will show what lessons can be learned in the Sri Lankan crisis and how the movement in Indonesia can prepare for turmoil next day.

Especially for the past year, Sri Lankans have difficulty buying basic necessities such as fuel, elpiji gas, and essential medicines due to severe inflation. Food inflation reached 30.2%, while inflation of basic goods needs reached 18.7%. BBM prices even increased by 2 times. The blackout of lights that can reach 12 hours every day really throws the working people into the dark. The people cannot even afford to buy candles for lighting when they die lights due to skyrocketing candle prices, with 1 pack reaching 500 Rs ( around 20500 Rupiah).

Pandemic is a reason for the government to reduce the salaries of most workers. According to UNICEF research, the average income for households in cities fell by 37%, while in rural households it fell by 30%. The government's decision to remove price controls for almost every commodity caused chaos in the price of goods. The decision was one of the factors causing inflation in Sri Lanka, besides the peg chain crisis that rocked the whole world. With rising prices for goods and falling wages, the people of Sri Lanka are increasingly desperate.

The Role of Government in Crisis

The suffering of the Sri Lankan people was compounded by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's regime along with other Rajapaksa family members who were incompetent in dealing with the crisis. In fact, competence is not the main requirement for being a politician or ruler. During the crisis, all government policies were to ensure prosperity for capitalists. To achieve the support of local capitalists in the 2019 elections, the Rajapaksa family promised tax breaks for entrepreneurs.

This tax cut caused a decline in state income by 33%, bringing Sri Lanka to the worst crisis of independence. The budget deficit is resolved by cutting social budgets intended for the working people. Besides that,the government is trying to deal with this deficit by printing large amounts of money to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, which further complicates control of inflation.

Scandals also triggered economic and political turmoil. Corruption in imports of organic fertilizer caused major problems with rice harvest in 2022. In addition, last year's elpiji gas hose explosion scandal showed government negligence to regulate gas companies. The government's decision to spend 360 million Rs to import luxury cars for the Prime Minister and lawmakers amid difficulties to meet the education, health, budget, and public transportation also exposes government priorities and gaps between small people and high officials.

The government covered the state cash shortage – caused by tax breaks for capitalists – through debt to various imperialist powers, from the IMF ( America ), India, and China. The Sri Lankan government's strategy in debt is to pay debts and interest with new debt. Anyone knows how the manhole cover policy will end. What will fall into this debt pit is the working people. Although state cash has been rapidly reduced due to the economic crisis, the government is still trying to pay debts by cutting social budgets and subsidies for the people.

The Multilevel of Social Turmoil

Seeing the situation getting worse, Sri Lankan people staged demonstrations. On Thursday, March 31, 2022, the masses gathered in Colombo spontaneously. The action began peacefully by holding banners and carrying candles. The demands of the citizens were to ask Gota Rajapaksa and other Rajapaksa members to withdraw from government. The slogan expressed among them “ Pay BBM with Pandora dollars ”, referring to members of the Rajapaksa family who entered the Pandora Papers for embezzling millions of dollars in foreign accounts. Mass action was brutally responded to by the government, by firing tear gas, water cannons, and curfew coercion.

This large demonstration was initially dominated by middle class layers such as students and lawyers. This shows that Sri Lanka's condition was so severe that it pushed the middle class towards demonstrations. Malang, the organized labor movement only supports passive demonstrations. Trade union leaders are reluctant to organize their members to go on strike.

The momentum of the demonstration continued to increase to cause severe divisions among the ruling class. Seeing the regime increasingly difficult to maintain, 26 cabinet members resigned on April 4, including Namal Rajapaksa, nephew of President Gota.

Thus, the remaining high-ranking official only lived President Gota and his younger brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. Even when Gota installed a new Minister of Finance in order to negotiate with the IMF, the Minister immediately resigned. Lenin said, one of the conditions of the pre-revolutionary period was the division between the ruling classes.

Within parliament, 42 MPs from the Rajapaksa coalition changed their position to become independent on April 5. This condition caused the number of Rajapaksa coalitions to shrink to 108 seats, less than 5 seats to form a majority. However, no other coalition is able to form a majority. This situation made Gota Rajapaksa still able to maintain his seat of power.

Counter-Revolutionary Action Whipped the Revolution

Mahinda demanded that Gota resign, and he was increasingly desperate. Finally Prime Minister Mahinda bet by deploying counter-revolutionary forces before he was fired in hopes that the protest would stop and his dismissal be canceled. Seeing that the action has been running for 1 month, he predicts the strength of the action will weaken. However, this action actually produces the opposite result!

On Monday, May 9, Mahinda Rajapaksa, her son, and Namal Rajapaksa organized a pro-government demonstration by gathering lumpen gang elements collected through Mahinda connections. The gang was delivered by bus to the Prime Minister's complex in Temple Trees, Colombo. The gang members were force-fed and then they were taken to the location of anti-government demonstrations and given the freedom to make a riot for a day. They were also assisted by prisoners who were released from prison.

Quickly this counter-revolutionary action caused a stir by attacking the demonstrators. Videos on social media show men and women members of anti-government demonstrations being beaten mercilessly by using wood. All these brutal acts took place without any intervention from the apparatus. However, as Karl Marx said, “ Revolution sometimes requires counter-revolutionary shards to be pushed forward. ” Workers who see barbarism are increasingly triggered to fight counter-revolutionary attacks.

Student unions and workers finally encouraged their members to participate in protests and help the demonstrators. The back resistance of workers, students and demonstrators was so great that counter-revolutionary action was hit back. The mass of government supporters was even cornered at Lake Beira and was finally forced to throw themselves into the lake, so it had to be helped by the police. Demonstrators also set fire to buses used to carry mass government supporters.

The demonstrators then continued the action by destroying the Sri Lankan office of Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the ruling class party of Sri Lanka. Luxury cars from Prime Minister and parliament members were burned down. The high official's house was also burned, including the home of the Rajapaksa family's ancestors. The situation quickly changed.

Middle-class leader deadlock

The revolutionary situation inevitably gave rise to axidental leaders who tried to exploit mass turmoil, such as several opposition parties and middle class associations in Sri Lanka. Opposition party member Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), consisting of capitalists and the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL), the union of Sri Lankan lawyers, became the most vocal government opposition. They stressed the need to form a new government formed based on national unity and make plans for negotiations with the IMF. Both of these solutions are quickly deadlocked.

When Sri Lankan society is torn apart by the interests of irreconcilable classes, the call for “ national unity government ” is utopian. This is not a matter of lack of national unity, but how the capitalist class undoubtedly imposes a capitalist crisis on the shoulders of workers, peasants and the urban poor. The masses have also realized that negotiating efforts with the IMF will only bring bigger problems later on. IMF assistance must come on conditions that further aggravate people's lives, including reducing subsidies and making it easier to import goods.

Slogan “225 must go!” what was promoted by the mass movement reflected that the masses did not trust any politician or political party that entered the bourgeois parliament. Politicians from the bourgeois opposition coalition party, leaders of the reactionary sauvinist group, and companies that gave false support were immediately criticized by the masses. They were even expelled while intervening.

The rejection of reformist and capitalist leaders by the masses is a healthy reaction, because the revolutionary instincts of the masses realize collaboration with the bourgeoisie and its political institutions is not the solution. The masses know what they don't want, but they don't know clearly what to fight for to replace the existing status quo. Without a revolutionary party that can mobilize mass energy with the right program, mass militant energy will recede and end in exhaustion. Amid this exhaustion, the ruling class can hit back with repression, and reformist leaders with their organizational networks can direct the mass movement on a safe path: bourgeois constitutional path which will essentially save capitalism. It is not enough to rely solely on the revolutionary instincts of the masses.This needs to be given a continuing political and organizational expression, something that can only be provided by Marxism.

Passive Trade Union Leadership

At the beginning of the protest movement, trade union leaders did not mobilize the masses at all. There was fear among trade union leaders that union intervention would disrupt the relations they had built with bourgeois political parties. The call for a mass strike was first expressed a month after the protest took place. This strike was merely symbolic and showed the weaknesses of trade union leaders. Often the workers are only directed to sick permission for a day.

Health workers only participate in protests for 2 hours on the grounds that they do not interfere with their services. Even with weak leaders, workers follow the action with enthusiasm. During the strike, the shopping facilities and services became completely empty.Labor participation in countering the May 9 counter-revolutionary action also showed strong enthusiasm despite the leadership who was always hesitant.

Here we see how the reformist leadership of trade unions always lags behind when mass movements erupt. Not only did they fall behind, they became the brakes of the mass movement because of their conservatism. Because they have long been trapped in the game “ advocacy ” laborers, these leaders are accustomed to thinking within the limits of legality and normative demands. The perspective of the revolution is not in their insight at all. This is the limitation of trade unions, something which from the beginning was fought by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. A revolutionary party is needed that can draw historical lessons about the role of the working class in the socialist revolution, which can prepare for revolutionary leadership for the labor movement.

What to Do?

Mao said that the current crisis was a crisis of the leadership of the proletariat, and this statement accurately described the situation of Sri Lanka. While the masses are not yet aware of their true task thanks to the empty revolutionary leadership, mass energy is increasingly drained away. As the movement receded, a new bourgeois government would be formed, with or without Rajapaksa, which did not change the essence of this regime other than its packaging. Not only that. The ruling class who had been trembling with fear would launch its revenge, launching repression. Emergency laws have been used by the regime to inflict activists.

Thus, the most advanced line of the revolutionary movement must take lessons from the weaknesses of the current action: revolutionary leadership must be immediately built through the revolutionary party in order to be able to organize mass action out of its spontaneity. This party cannot be built precisely when the revolution is rolling. It must be prepared far in the day. This party must be built on the basis of Marxism which fought for the workers' revolution and refused all efforts to divert this revolution into mere reform. Without this party, the mass movement will remain spontaneous, reach confusion at a certain point and lose momentum, and end in demoralization.

Sooner or later, Indonesia will enter a similar revolutionary period. We still have time to build a revolutionary party that will be ready to welcome the coming revolution and use this opportunity to go further. But this time is limited, and must be used as well as possible to draw up the lessons and experiences of the Bolsheviks in winning the October Revolution. For revolutionaries, there is nothing more urgent today than the task of building the Bolshevik Party.