https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ0YhnfPnGg&feature
Saturday, August 8, 2020
New US unemployment claims top 1 million for 20th straight week
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/07/unem-a07.html
As Senate adjourns for weekend
New US unemployment claims top 1 million for 20th straight week
By Jacob Crosse
7 August 2020
Data published by the US Labor Department on Thursday showed that for the 20th straight week more than 1 million workers filed unemployment claims for the first time. Unlike in previous weeks, the workers who filed last week will not be eligible to receive the enhanced federal unemployment benefit of $600 a week that expired last week along with a partial federal moratorium on evictions.
Thursday’s report did little to prompt movement between the Democrats and Republicans toward an agreement on a fifth coronavirus stimulus bill. This is despite over 30 million workers losing out on the enhanced benefits last week, while over 23 million are facing eviction in the next two months, according to the Aspen Institute.
Instead, the negotiations, with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on one side and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer on the other, ended the same as on previous days: without an agreement, much less a date for a possible vote.
Without the possibility of an agreement before Friday, senators from both parties adjourned for a three-day weekend.
“We’re still a considerable amount apart,” Meadows told reporters after another day of dithering. Pelosi, talking out of both sides of her mouth, said she could see “light at the end of the tunnel,” but that the two sides were “very far apart—it’s most unfortunate.”
Making clear the willingness of the Democrats to agree to a cut in benefits, Schumer expressed “disappointment” over Thursday’s talks and blamed the Republicans for being “unwilling to meet in the middle.”
The 1.19 million new unemployment claims for the week ending July 25 were slightly down from the 1.43 million claims the previous week. However, the figure is still nearly double the pre-pandemic record of 695,000 claims set in 1982. Overall, roughly 55 million unemployment claims have been filed since mid-March.
Currently, there are an estimated 5.4 million job openings, while over 31 million people are collecting some form of unemployment pay. The few jobs that are available are mostly low-paying and carry a high risk of contracting the virus.
Research conducted by the California Policy Lab found that “more than half (57 percent) of recent unemployment claims” are from workers who are resubmitting or reopening their claims after they had returned to work but were then let go again.
This important statistic shows the falsity of claims by Republicans and some Democrats that the now expired federal supplement to state unemployment benefits enacted in March as part of the CARES Act corporate bailout is an “overpayment” and creates a “disincentive to work.” Workers are not as a rule refusing to return to previously held jobs, despite legitimate concerns about the risk of COVID-19 infection. Rather, the jobs are not there, as businesses continue to close while the virus spreads out of control across the country.
The research conducted by the California Policy Lab coincides with findings released Monday by Cornell University, which found that 31 percent of workers who returned to work after being laid off or furloughed at the start of the pandemic have since been laid off a second time. An additional 26 percent of workers surveyed reported that even though they had been called back to work, their supervisor or boss warned that they could be laid off again.
As with all aspects of the coronavirus crisis, the working class and poor are being made to suffer the brunt of its effects, including joblessness. Recent analysis conducted by economics professor Peter Ganong at the University of Chicago concluded that workers in the lowest income quintile, that is, the bottom 20 percent, have experienced three times as many job losses as higher-paid workers in the top quintile.
In addition to Thursday’s new unemployment claims report, the Department of Labor released data showing that over 16.1 million people are currently collecting traditional unemployment benefits from their state. The ending of the federal supplement means a reduction in weekly income for millions of workers of between 60 percent and 80 percent, depending on the state where they reside.
Oklahoma has the highest drop-off. The average Oklahoma worker will see an 85.6 percent reduction in wages without the federal enchantment. Louisiana is second, with a 75.4 percent reduction, while jobless workers in Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida will receive at least 70 percent less in benefits.
Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site spoke to Rick, an unemployed child care worker from Michigan. He said: “I was first put on a leave of absence from my job working in early childhood education in March. It was originally not intended to last very long. I remember my bosses and coworkers being very blindsided by the whole situation.
“It’s been very difficult to remain sheltered in place for this long. I am fairly certain that I will not be able to be rehired at the same job that I left in March.
“In June, I tentatively accepted an offer to return to the job on a limited basis by the end of July, with the hope that COVID cases would stay low. When they began increasing again in early July, I called and told them I was uncomfortable with returning to work at that time. My employer said she understood and that many of my coworkers had also said they wished to wait for a few more months before returning.
“I have fears now that I will be removed and will have to reapply to work there again. This will basically wipe out all the pay raises I’ve received while working there and force me to start all over again. We’re already too low-paid as it is.
“This brings up the $600 expanded benefits. With those, I at least had financial support that I needed if the pandemic continues to remain a problem. Before the pandemic, I would try to limit myself to spending about $10 a day on any items beyond gas for my car or bills.
“Working in child care, there had been weeks when my bank account would run out days before my paycheck arrived. I would bum food from the kitchen at my job. Some of my coworkers actually brought food from home and would share.
“When the first expanded payments came in, I found myself able to actually fill my cart at the grocery store. I would go early in the morning to avoid the crowds and maintain healthy social distancing. Remarkably, I could participate in society somewhat more easily during the pandemic, simply due to actually having some money to spend.
“What really gets me about them saying this benefit is a disincentive to work is that I didn’t create this pandemic. They did. They failed us and want to tell us that we’re the ones being overpaid!
“It’s not easy having to remain inside during the summer, losing contact with friends and coworkers. Not to mention the children. I can hope that I’ll be able to at least last a few more months until it’s safer to look for work. I can only hope.
“I’ve had fights with family because they refuse to take the coronavirus seriously. I don’t know if at this point I’ll even retain all my job skills when I go back because it’s been nearly six months of waiting. I certainly don’t enjoy life being put on hold. Now they want us to risk dying as well. The crisis this has created won’t go away with a return to work. Everything is changed.”
“A nationwide strike is what needs to be done.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/07/educ-a07.html
Angry educators and parents across the US protest the reckless return to classrooms
By Nancy Hanover
7 August 2020
Protests continue daily across the US as teachers, school workers and parents rally against the bipartisan demand for a return to classrooms, as coronavirus cases hit five million and deaths top 162,000. The Socialist Equality Party’s statement calling for a nationwide general strike and elaborating a political perspective to mobilize the working class against the homicidal return to work and school is being widely discussed and shared across dozens of Facebook groups and other social media. Educators and workers everywhere will not, and cannot, accept this implicit death sentence.
As schools reopen, COVID-19 spreads immediately. Schools in Corinth, Mississippi, opened last week, but had one case by Friday. As of yesterday, 116 students have been sent home to quarantine. Corinth held daily temperature and symptoms checks, as per the CDC guidelines, yet could not prevent wide exposure. Similar spread has been recorded as schools opened in Gwinnett, Georgia, southwest Kansas, and Greenfield, Indiana.
The depth and breadth of opposition to Wall Street’s lethal edict to return to work and school, however, has mostly been ignored by the national mainstream media. It briefly covered a few of the union-backed National Day of Resistance rallies but has deliberately downplayed the growing social opposition. The latest polling numbers show only 16 percent of parents support Donald Trump’s demand for five-day-a-week face-to-face instruction, with 56 percent saying it would not be safe to send children back to school in their communities for in-person learning.
This article can only give a snapshot of some current developments in this developing movement. Not mentioned below are many other rallies this week, including in central Ohio; south Salt Lake City, Utah; Long Beach and Stockton, California; Columbia, Missouri; and Orland Park, Illinois.
On Thursday, hundreds of teachers, staff, parents, and students protested at a meeting of the Jefferson Parish School Board (Metairie), representing the largest school district in Louisiana with some 50,000 students. One teacher, David Fields, had his hands painted red to symbolize the lives that would be lost due to the reckless reopening. He carried a sign drawn like a bullseye, which read, “Dead custodians. Dead students. Dead Principals. Dead Teacher Aides. Dead Parents. Dead Bus Drivers.” Written in the center was “Blood on your hands,” indicting the school board.
The meeting, ostensibly to gather public testimony, was abruptly shut down in the face of public anger. The board had confirmed that a “handful” of employees in the district tested positive for COVID-19 after teachers and staff returned to campuses August 3. One teacher spoke bluntly: “Let me explain something. I contracted the virus at the same time as my student’s mother. I am here. She is not. You do not understand the guilt that sits on my heart and on my mind every single day I go to work. What if I did something wrong?” Responding to community pressure, Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee-Sheng said that she has requested the board consider postponing the start by three weeks.
On Thursday, hundreds of Reno, Nevada teachers were expected at a rally against plans to reopen Washoe County schools on August 17. English teacher M.J. Ubando said, “Someone needed to do this. I'm not thrilled that it's me, but I had to really ask myself who I wanted to be in this moment,” reported the Reno Gazette. She had COVID-19 in April and spent weeks recovering, barely able to do simple chores. “People are going to die and I guess they are OK with that?” she emphasized, stating that if she lost her job for speaking out, it was worth it. Her husband added, “Many of us are the working class, and with opening schools, it is just going to get worse.”
On Thursday, teachers marched in Lansing, Michigan to demand Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer suspend all in-person education. Whitmer, who has been “fully vetted” as a possible vice-presidential pick by Joe Biden, is fully implicated in the big business drive to return to work. At the behest of the Detroit Three, she allowed auto plants to resume manufacturing in mid-May. Rachel Cain, a Grand Rapids teacher, attended the rally at the state capitol, bringing a black, tombstone-shaped sign, inscribed, "Here lies Ms. Cain. Last year she bought school supplies with her paycheck. This year she bought the economy with her life."
On Wednesday, hundreds of Georgia teachers parked outside Gwinnett County School's headquarters and blasted their horns for hours to protest the return to school buildings. Gwinnett is the state’s largest school district and was the site where nearly 300 school employees either tested positive or had direct exposure to COVID-19 and were forced to quarantine, just one day after in-person pre-planning. There are 17,781 positive cases in Gwinnett County, with 1,996 hospitalizations and 240 deaths, as of last Sunday.
Yesterday in Florida, a hearing was held in the Florida Education Association lawsuit against Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ order requiring schools to reopen for face-to-face instruction. The July 6 order required all brick and mortar schools to provide five-day-a-week schooling and open in August unless state and local health officials direct otherwise.
Florida now has had more than 510,000 COVID-19 cases, the highest per capita infection rate in the US, and more than 7,745 deaths. Teachers have been staging protests around the state for weeks, including in Pasco County, Duval County (Jacksonville), Hillsborough County (Tampa), and Escambia County (Pensacola). With some schools slated to open next Monday, the union hearing authorized a change in venue, a delaying tactic.
“My husband and I are both teachers, and we have three children, two with severe asthma, and the oldest also has immune issues,” a Florida educator wrote on Facebook. “This is not right. My district isn’t even allowing me to choose between being a mom and a teacher. The choice is, do you want a job or not. Like living on one teacher’s salary for a family of five is even possible... I’m not even allowed to struggle financially to keep my family safe with the comfort that I have a position to come back to after 16 years of loyal service.”
DeSantis, an outspoken Trump supporter and school privatizer, has long aligned himself with the government’s attempt to destroy public education. Florida has seen possibly the most aggressive drive in the nation for virtual charter schools and privatization. No doubt, the state’s demand for a return to school aims to both force workers back onto the job and continue to bleed public schools of resources through declining enrollment.
In Missouri, Republican Governor Mike Parson has issued no overarching state policy regarding reopening, but infamously stated last month, “These kids have got to get back to school… And if they do get COVID-19, which they will—and they will when they go to school—they’re not going to the hospitals.” His bald admission that children will inevitably be infected, together with the claim that none will be seriously ill, has sparked great anger. It flies in the face of the well-documented and growing number of serious illnesses and deaths among young people, not to mention the long-term health implications of the virus which are still being investigated. On Monday, two Florida teenagers died from the coronavirus.
On Saturday, teachers protested in Kansas City, Missouri, after forming the Facebook group Missourians for Educational Change. Kansas City teacher Andrew Rexroat told local media channel KCUR, “We talk about the potential trauma of kids missing about three months of school. We’re not talking about the trauma of a kid potentially losing a loved one because of COVID.” Teachers waved signs that read, “Science, not politics,” and “Online until decline.”
St. Louis Public Schools teacher Grace Hogan drove four hours to attend the rally, noted KCUR. She told the crowd that teachers have to speak up because “there is no number of acceptable deaths.” She added, “For decades now, we have taught teachers that it is their job to put themselves between students and a bullet. So here we are. It’s a little bit slower, it looks a little bit different than all the drills they made us run. But this is where we are, and we will stand here and persist and insist on a better plan.”
Nevertheless, on Monday, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft doubled-down on the return to school, stating, “At some point, we need to just put our heads down and say we’re gonna get through it, and we definitely need to send our kids back to school.”
Provocatively emphasizing the homicidal character of the demand to reopen schools, he added that he didn't “know a father alive that wouldn’t risk getting COVID, even risk dying, to make sure that his children had the greatest foundation for success for their life they could have.”
Missouri has seen 1,266 deaths from COVID-19, with 1,193 new cases reported Tuesday, bringing the total to 54,080 since the outbreak began.
Missouri resident Joanna Martinez wrote to the World Socialist Web Site Educators Newsletter to express her outrage. “I am a parent of two students, and they plan to reopen schools in the area on August 24. I'm seriously concerned about my children’s well-being and that of the staff.
“There is no requirement for the staff or the students to wear a mask. The rooms are not big enough to practice social distancing. There are not enough safety precautions in place to assure my children will be safe while attending school.
“They are not offering homeschooling online, half days. There are no precautions, no plan, nothing at all. It’s got a bunch of parents here just freaked out. They’re looking into parents signing a death waiver. I talked to my mom, who is a nurse. She told me she would not sign that paper and wouldn’t blame me if I didn’t want to send my kids back. It’s very dangerous.
“My frustrations are beyond limits, and my fear is indescribable. Our children need an education, but their safety is number one. The county and district seem to be selfishly putting that last. They say not many children have been affected, but that’s just because they closed the schools. Once they open, it’s going to be a disaster.
“I think that a nationwide strike is what needs to be done. I do not believe that it’s safe for schools to open right now. If they do reopen, we will see a significant jump in positive cases and possible death increase with young children. I feel they are completely neglecting the well-being of the students, staff and parents for their own personal gain and it’s disgusting.
“I just hope more people will put their foot down and stand up for the children and teachers.”
The SEP’s statement urges educators and all workers to form rank-and-file safety committees, to contact us for assistance in organizing your struggle, and to sign up for the World Socialist Web Site Educators Newsletter to follow nationwide and international developments in education.
The author also recommends:
For a nationwide general strike to halt the drive to reopen schools! [5 August 2020]
US Homeland Security chief defends police-state crackdown, announces federal paramilitaries to remain in Portland
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/07/wolf-a07.html
By Barry Grey
7 August 2020
In testimony Thursday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Chad Wolf, aggressively defended the violent crackdown on anti-police brutality protesters in Portland, Oregon by paramilitary units of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an agency of DHS.
Wolf also announced that the “full augmented DHS law enforcement posture” would remain on alert in Portland indefinitely, despite an agreement with state and local officials to draw back the militarized federal immigration police and allow Oregon state troopers to police protesters rallying daily outside the Hatfield Federal Courthouse in downtown Portland.
Wolf denounced the Democratic mayor of Portland and governor of Oregon as well as the Democratic-controlled Portland City Council, all of whom publicly opposed the deployment of the federal police by President Trump and repeatedly demanded their removal. He presented an Alice in Wonderland version of events, according to which violent and criminal mobs of left-wing terrorists and Antifa-linked anarchists attempted night after night to destroy the courthouse and violently attacked the CBP paramilitaries.
In Wolf's telling—echoed by the Republican majority on the committee—his forces were “abandoned” by local and state authorities, who, by implication, were complicit in rampant mob violence.
He also attacked the Portland City Council for “prohibiting local police cooperation and ‘information sharing’ with “federal law enforcement,” i.e., Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and CBP agents who arbitrarily detain immigrants and jail or deport them.
He denounced the media coverage, which documented to some extent the brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrators carried out by CBP police, including a specially trained fascistic unit called BORTAC, using tear gas, flash-bang grenades, truncheons and “impact munitions.” At least one demonstrator, 26-year-old Donavan LaBella, was critically wounded when a paramilitary officer shot him in the head and cracked his skull.
Wolf specifically defended the chilling practice carried out in Portland of seizing protesters blocks away from the courthouse, trundling them into unmarked vehicles and taking them to secret locations to be interrogated, without probable cause and in many cases without any charges being laid. This trademark of military dictatorships and fascist regimes he called a “common de-escalation tactic.”
He boasted that his agents had arrested 99 Portland protesters on federal charges and added that “the next 30 days will see a lot more activity in terms of charging people.” The Washington Post reported Thursday that the charges include assaulting a federal officer, arson, damaging federal property and operating a drone in a restricted area. There are 24 felony and 45 misdemeanor charges, carrying prison sentences of up to 20 years.
The police-state assault on protesters in Portland is an extension of the Gestapo-style campaign against immigrants being carried out by Trump and his fascistic aide Stephen Miller, in which Wolf's immigration police have served as Trump’s personal militarized force. In February, the White House confirmed that it was deploying BORTAC to conduct immigration roundups in cities, such as Portland, where local governments have ordered local police not to fully comply with federal immigration officials.
So-called “sanctuary cities” where these special tactical units, which have served in Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have been deployed include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco and Newark.
Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, Republican from Wisconsin, set the tone for the rest of the Republicans on the panel in his opening remarks. He named two police officers killed in the course of the nationwide, multiracial protests against racism and police violence that erupted in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25. He then cited DHS to claim that 277 attacks on police and federal officers occurred “during those ‘peaceful protests’ that started in May.”
This grotesquely distorted presentation of the protests—which were savagely attacked by local police and National Guard troops—was conflated with statistics showing an increase in urban crime during the pandemic to claim that the protests have unleashed “anarchy” and an out-of-control crime wave on the country.
This narrative, which echoes that of the White House, is aimed at justifying the imposition of dictatorial rule, based on the military and the police, including fascistic forces being encouraged by Trump both inside and outside the repressive organs of the state. It is the response of a ruling class discredited by its catastrophic handling of the coronavirus pandemic, following decades of self-enrichment, war and attacks on working-class living standards, and terrified of the growth of popular opposition and hatred for capitalism.
The Democrats are no less petrified at the prospect of a mass movement of the working class. Their response to the wave of protests has been to align themselves even more closely with the military, the FBI and the CIA, while seeking to hijack the protests and channel them behind a racialist narrative. The Democratic Party and allied media, led by the New York Times, interpret every issue—from the pandemic, to unemployment, to police killings—almost entirely as manifestations of racism, concealing the basic class divisions in society that underlie racial discrimination, and working to divide the working class.
None of the Democrats at Thursday’s hearing raised the fundamental threat to democratic rights posed by the police-state policies of DHS and the Trump administration, which were defended across the board by Wolf. They were silent on Trump’s attempted coup on June 1, which preceded the crackdown in Portland and deployment of federal police to many other cities. On that day, Trump threatened to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act and deploy active-duty troops across the country to crush the protests against police violence.
He was stopped at that point by the military brass, which considered such a move premature and unprepared, and likely to set off a mass popular uprising that could spiral out of control. But as the World Socialist Web Site warned, the danger of an anti-constitutional coup d’etat remained, and the authoritarian plotting centered in the White House continued.
The ranking Democrat on the committee, Michigan Senator Gary Peters, meekly criticized Wolf for undermining public trust in the DHS through his “heavy-handed” tactics, and said the “singular focus on protecting federal property is distracting the department from addressing the threat posed by domestic terrorism” He demonstratively did not defend the state and local Democratic officials in Oregon who were attacked by Wolf. Nor did he defend the protesters from the DHS head’s slanders.
Kamala Harris of California, reportedly at the top of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s list for vice president, along with former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice, also failed to defend the protesters. She focused her questions on suggestions that Wolf was acting in concert with Trump and tailoring his provocative policies to Trump’s reelection campaign.
Just in the week preceding Thursday’s hearing, the Washington Post revealed that DHS’s Office of Intelligence Analysis had drawn up open source intelligence reports on two journalists who covered the protests in Portland and created “baseball card” dossiers on dozens of arrested protesters.
The Nation obtained a copy of a DHS intelligence report showing that Wolf’s department was targeting activists, branding them as “Antifa,” and attempting to tie them to a foreign power, a prelude to indicting them as terrorists. The leaked report named several individuals who had fought with the Kurdish YPG militia against ISIS during the period when Washington was allied with the YPG. This documented the plans to use the post-9/11 “anti-terror” laws to criminalize domestic political opposition on the left.
And on July 30, officers of the US Border Patrol, an agency of CBP and DHS, raided a camp set up by the migrant aid group No More Deaths in Arizona, 11 miles from the US-Mexico border, and arrested one of the activists.
Neither the anti-terror surveillance of protesters nor the raid on immigrant aid activists were raised by any of the Democrats on the committee.
Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna wins election setting the stage for an eruption of working-class struggles
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/07/slel-a07.html
By K. Ratnayake
7 August 2020
President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) won the national election on Wednesday and is set to form the next government with a substantial majority. The party secured 128 seats in the 225-member parliament, an increase of 53 MPs.
The opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), which was established early this year as a breakaway from the right-wing conservative United National Party (UNP), won 47 seats. The thoroughly discredited UNP, which was led by former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, lost 58 seats and will not have a single MP in the next parliament.
The Sinhala chauvinist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which contested the elections as the Jathika Jana Balavegaya—a new formation established with backing from a host of academics and professionals—won two seats, four less than in the previous parliament. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), based in the war-ravaged North and East, secured only nine seats, down from 16 MPs in the previous parliament.
According to initial Election Commission estimates, only 71 percent of electors cast a ballot. This is a 12 percent drop in the numbers participating in the presidential election 10 months ago and 6 percent lower than the 2015 August national election.
On Wednesday, President Rajapakse issued a statement insisting that he had won 70 percent of the vote and falsely claiming it was an “expression of confidence” in the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The sharp fall in the number of voters, however, indicates opposition to Rajapakse’s increasingly authoritarian methods and his backing for a big business offensive against jobs, wages and unsafe working conditions. Rajapakse’s claims of lower COVID-19 infection rates in Sri Lanka are because his government has refused to carry out mass testing.
The SLPP campaigned during the election for a two-thirds parliamentary majority, so it could rewrite the constitution and scrap all current limits on the president’s executive powers. The party’s lavish election campaign is estimated to have cost around 1,202 million rupees ($US6.5 million), far more than the other capitalist parties spent on their propaganda.
President Rajapakse addressed dozens of rallies, mobilising people in violation of the official pandemic health regulations. Each of Rajapakse’s appearances, according to an election monitoring group, cost the state 27 million rupees.
After casting his vote on Wednesday, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, the president’s brother, told the media that if the SLPP failed to win a two-thirds parliamentary majority in the election it would “make arrangements” to secure the necessary numbers. In other words, by purchasing MP votes.
The Sri Lankan president and his brother, along with the military hierarchy, want a dictatorship. Like every government around the world, President Rajapakse is determined to impose the burden of the economic crisis, accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, on the masses. This will set the stage for the eruption of intense class struggles and revolutionary upheavals.
In the run up to the election, the SLPP stepped up its anti-Muslim and anti-Tamil chauvinism in order to divert social tensions and polarise Sinhala voters. The party used the findings of an official investigation into last year’s Easter Sunday bombings by an ISIS-backed Islamic terrorist group to unleash a wave of anti-Muslim propaganda.
At the same time, it insisted that the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was remerging. The police provided fuel for these unsubstantiated assertions by suddenly claiming that they had found weapons in several places in the North.
Over the past six months, the opposition parties, including the SJB, UNP, JVP, TNA, the Muslim parties, and the plantation-based unions have publicly supported President Rajapakse and the SLPP minority administration. These formations attended two all-party meetings called by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse’s then SLPP minority administration and backed the president’s measures to “combat the pandemic.”
On April 27, the same organisations pledged “unconditional support” to the president if he reconvened the dissolved parliament. The SJB and UNP separately met with him twice to offer their backing, while the TNA held a private meeting with the prime minister at which they guaranteed their support.
On May 4, UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe told the Daily Mirror that his party was “willing to help the government” because it is not “a time to play adversarial politics.”
None of these parties challenged the rapid and ongoing militarisation of Sri Lanka’s government administration. All of them back the government’s unsafe “reopening of the economy” and the massive attacks on jobs, wages and social rights. Like Rajapakse, these parties all fear the eruption of protests and strikes by workers, young people and the rural masses.
The pseudo-left played a key role in preventing the working class from challenging the government. The Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP), the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) and the United Socialist Party (USP) derailed workers’ struggles against the austerity measures of the former Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government. This paved the way for Gotabhaya Rajapakse to pose as the sole opposition during last year’s presidential election.
NSSP leader Wickremabahu Karunaratne even contested this month’s election on a UNP district ticket. The FSP wrote twice to the prime minister supporting the government’s response to the pandemic, despite its “differences.”
FSP union leader Duminda Nagamuva, after meeting with Sri Lankan Labour Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, said that the minister had promised to solve workers’ problems. The USP and its unions also met with Gunawardena and big business leaders, supporting their wage and job cutting plans and blocking the eruption of workers’ struggles.
Having come to power by exploiting these betrayals, President Rajapakse’s new government is now preparing for class war.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse ominously declared: “We are ready to face the economic challenges. We have already faced challenges more severe than these.”
This is a reference to the sharp decline in Sri Lankan economic growth, which is expected to be negative 1.3 percent this year. The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted on Sri Lankan exports, foreign remittances have drastically fallen and tourism has collapsed. Colombo also has to pay $US4 billion for foreign loans over the next three years.
Rajapakse’s statement that previous governments have “faced more severe challenge than this” is a reference to Colombo’s communalist war against the LTTE, which ended in May 2009.
At that time, Mahinda Rajapakse was the president and his brother Gotabhaya Rajapakse the defence secretary. Forty thousand Tamil civilians were killed and hundreds of surrendered fighters “disappeared” in the final weeks of the war, according to United Nations estimates. During and after the war, the Rajapakse administration ruthlessly suppressed the struggles of workers and the poor.
Addressing an election rally last week, President Rajapakse denounced a protest strike by 10,000 Colombo Port workers against the sale of a port terminal to an Indian company.
“The ports have been closed down for no other reason than to leave our economy in ruins. I’m not intimidated by this,” he declared. “[E]very time a leader who cares about the country comes to power extremist groups work towards sabotaging [him].”
While Rajapakse hopes that an absolute parliamentary majority and new dictatorial measures will allow him to take on the working class, the eruption of militant struggles will assume revolutionary proportions. The rising anger of workers and youth against this corrupt political social order and its attacks on jobs, living conditions and democratic rights, including during the 30-year war, is reaching a breaking point.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) was the only organisation in the elections that explained the deepening crisis and the need for workers and youth to break from every faction of the bourgeoisie and make the necessary political preparations for the revolutionary challenges ahead.
It called on workers to form action committees in every workplace and in working-class neighbourhoods to confront the pandemic disaster and government attacks on wages, job and democratic rights, along with the danger of imperialist war. The SEP explained that the fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government to implement socialist measures is the only way forward for the working class.
The SEP won a total of 780 votes in the three districts that it contested—Jaffna 146, Colombo 303 and Nuwara Eliya 331. While these numbers are still small, they are class-conscious votes for socialism and an indication of growing support for the SEP.
In the coming period, the SEP will intensify its political struggle to win broad layers of workers and youth to socialist internationalism and build it as a mass party to lead the working class to power.
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