Sri Lanka: call a Hartal, prepare for power!

A month has now passed since nationwide anger erupted in Sri Lanka, leaving the ruling class shell-shocked. The movement has shown remarkable resilience. Neither monsoon rains, nor the Sinhala Tamil New Year festivities, nor the shenanigans of a government that knows every dirty trick in the book have succeeded in defusing the rage of the masses. And yet, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa remains stubbornly entrenched in power, mocking the masses by his presence.

The gloves must come off. Yet it has taken until yesterday, 28 April, for the nervous and hesitating trade union leaders to call even so much as a single day of strike action. But however trembling the call to strike might have been, the workers nevertheless responded to it with élan, giving the world a glimpse of their enormous power.

Gota Go Gama

It is worth briefly recapitulating how the anti-government movement in Sri Lanka has developed and the problems that it has posed.

One month ago, on 31 March, without a party or program, the masses of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, came out spontaneously onto the streets to express their seething rage. The Rajapaksas’ regime tried to bare its teeth. Rather than being cowed, the movement exploded into an all-island movement that swamped the government. The briefly declared state of emergency collapsed and the ruling class was thrown into a panic.

Video: #Ratta

The protests have since grown and grown, reaching a decisive turning point with a march on 9 April. The masses from across Colombo and beyond descended on the capital’s Galle Face Green, adjacent to the president’s beach-side office building. The protest was enormous. Over 100,000 attended – a significant show of strength in a city of 700,000 and a country with a population of 22 million people, the majority of whom live in rural districts.

But the protesters didn’t disperse as night fell on 9 April. Rather, they established a permanent tent village. Dubbed ‘Gota Go Gama’ (‘Gota Go Village’), it has become a focal point for the movement, much as the occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo offered a point of reference for the spontaneous movement of the Egyptian masses in 2011.

The mood at Gota Go Gama has been one of euphoria as the movement – overwhelmingly youthful – has given the masses a sense of the power of their united action. Where the Rajapaksas have used racial division as a political crutch – inciting the Sinhala Buddhist majority of the country against the minority religious and ethnic groups: Tamils, Muslims, and Christians – the masses have emphasised their unity and emphatically rejected this poison. All layers of society in every region of the island have been swept into a movement without precedent in decades.

Every evening for three weeks, the permanent protest at Galle Face in Colombo has swelled to 40,000-50,000 attendees. The working class is participating in this movement en masse – but so long as the trade unions refuse to call an all-out strike, they can only do so after working hours.

Despite the anger and militancy of the working class, therefore, the permanent occupation at Gota Go Gama has tended to have a disproportionately middle-class character. Students have played a leading role since day one. Lawyers have also played an enormous role in this movement: frustrating the government in the courts, giving free legal assistance to protesters, and organising protests of their own. There have even been a number of instances of police fraternising with the protesters and speaking from megaphones.

And it is no wonder the middle classes have been drawn in such a way: inflation, blackouts, and shortages are crushing the middle layers of society, just as they are crushing the poorest.

According to comrades in Sri Lanka, even the more-affluent supermarkets with a middle-class clientele are now selling firewood. Previously, the middle classes would cook with gas. When that ran out, they switched to kerosene. Once the kerosene ran out, they switched to electricity. But now the power cuts last for so long that even the moderately well-off are cooking on wood fires.

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