The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka is holding a public meeting entitled “How to defeat the IMF austerity program?” on January 3, 2025 at the Department of Political Science, University of Peradeniya. It is sponsored by Political Science Student Association of the university.
This is a pressing issue facing youth and workers. A new round of austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are further shattering the living and social conditions of the masses.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake came to power claiming his government would “renegotiate” the IMF loan to ease the impact on working people. Now he has declared that because of the dire state of the economy the austerity measures have to be implemented in full.
The IMF agenda includes privatising or commercialising hundreds of state-owned enterprises and down-sizing the public sector destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs. Welfare programs including public health and education will further be cut to the bone.
All of the establishment parties, the trade unions and the fake left organisations back the IMF program to the hilt. All of them are defenders of capitalism and bow to the demands of international finance capital.
The Samagi Jana Balawegaya and other opposition parties unanimously approved Dissanayake’s “policy statement” and his budget which will slash spending and boost profits in line with the IMF’s demands.
The trade unions controlled by the ruling Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) as well as those of the opposition parties and so-called independents have not raised a peep of opposition.
The fake-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) and its allies have hailed the election of the JVP/NPP as “progressive.” In September, leaders of the FSP aligned student unions met with Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, who is also education minister, to discuss the burning problems facing university students. She fobbed off their demands, saying they cannot be implemented immediately, which the student leaders have meekly accepted.
By contrast, the IYSSE starts from the basic fact that none of the immense problems facing workers and young people can be solved within the capitalist system. Across the world, the ruling classes and their political servants are insisting that working people must bear the burden of the global crisis of capitalism. The only alternative is a political fight to mobilise the working class in Sri Lanka and internationally on the basis of a socialist program.
We say: repudiate all foreign debts; nationalise big companies, plantations and banks under workers’ control; seize the accumulated wealth of capitalists; and use these resources to meet the pressing needs of the masses.
We call of students and youth to turn to the working class and help build an independent movement of the working class in the fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government to refashion society along socialist lines.
The IYSSE in Sri Lanka is a part of international youth organisation of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement. We urge students, academics, non-academic staff and others to attend our meeting to discuss these important issues.
Date and time: January 03, 2025 at 3.30 p.m.
Venue: Lecture Hall No. 86, Political Science Department, University of Peradeniya