Sri Lanka: The presidential election and the path to liberation

1 December 2014. A World to Win News Service. The following is by the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist)-CCPM. The stand we take and how we chose to act in relation to the upcoming presidential election in 2015 and beyond, will be most decisive. There is a rising tide of opposition to the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime spearheaded by a formidable array of forces that include the UNP, JHU, JVP, Chandrika, Sarath Fonseka and others. There is a powerful temptation among democratic forces, including the oppressed nationalities and broad Sinhala masses who share a singular wish to get rid of the neo-fascist Rajapaksa regime to bring about a change. However, we wish to alert the people about the real dangers and pitfalls that lie ahead. The campaign itself will prove to be bloody, vengeful and decisive. We must remain alert to the possibility of a military coup and a martial law regime, with foreign powers backing their horses. The simmering volcanic crisis and the blood-letting that will surely ensue, along with the further entrenchment of neo-liberal imperialist penetration, will throw the system into a deeper spiral of dysfunction and disintegration. This is bound to open up rare historic opportunities for seeking a radical revolutionary path of liberation. It is with this strategic view in mind that we present our line and analysis so we can prepare ourselves for the decisive battles ahead. The political line and analysis we represent may not have an immediate and broad resonance today. Yet, we believe that the exploited and oppressed masses will soon realize the bitter truth and seek a radical solution beyond the system. This message is aimed at empowering the class-conscious revolutionary forces who have seen through the system and the fraud of bourgeois elections and who desire a scientific path of liberation. However much we may desperately desire a change by overthrowing the regime, the real question is should we vote to further legitimize the oppressor state, and empower our oppressors? Should we perpetuate the system of domination and vote our slave-masters to power under whatever party, colour or banner? Or, should we reject the whole diabolical game of bourgeois elections set up to deceive, divide and conquer us? Should we decide to unite our forces across the divided and enforced barricades and organize the revolutionary class struggle of the masses to overthrow the state and the system? Should we remain slaves in this prison house of capitalist society, divided, dominated, subjugated and degraded? Or should we dare to organize and lead the revolution of the people of Lanka to power? It is up to us, together as the people of Lanka, to decide and claim our future! Then, with our indomitable collective revolutionary unity, strength and organized fighting capacity, should we build a whole new people's democratic state and a political, economic and social order owned, designed and ruled by the collective, revolutionary power of the people? The Rajapaksa regime has mortgaged and indebted the country, robbed the land and bled the people through astronomical graft and corruption, violated human and democratic rights, unleashed neo-fascist/chauvinist attacks on religious minorities, violently suppressed the oppressed nationalities, suppressed media freedom and rained white terror on the masses as no other regime before it. The "humanitarian war" to "liberate" the Tamil people has resulted in military occupation, political subjugation, indebtedness and wholesale exploitation of the land and resources of the Tamil people as never before. The Moslem nationality is being deliberately targeted by neo-fascist goons of the regime, while the Hill Country Tamil nationality is driven to a life of sheer poverty, misery, indebtedness and degradation. The oppressed Sinhala masses are duped by increasing doses of chauvinism and patriotism to turn their class hatred towards national and religious minorities. Selling the war victory as a glorious triumphal conquest over a subject people and drilling the ideology of Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy and hegemony, while driving fear and striking terror through enforced disappearances, abductions, assassinations and torture, have become the main pillars of the Rajapaksa dictatorship. Fanatical religious extremism led by reactionary fundamentalist theocratic gestapo goons combine with the armed force of the state to instil complete, stupefied and blind subservience to the state and regime. Any form of dissent or opposition is labelled as treachery to the nation and the state, as part of an international conspiracy, and dealt with accordingly. The Rajapaksa regime, due its own survival, has placed the country and the people of Lanka within a deadly grip of inter-imperialist rivalry and contention. Already, the country has been mortgaged and indebted to every imperialist power for all future generations, including China, the U.S., India, the European Union, Japan, the World Bank, the IMF and the Asian Development Bank. The gates to open-market/neo-liberal profit, plunder and pillage are to be opened even wider, by whoever wins the horse race. All kinds of international financial racketeers, crony contractors, drug lords, war lords, rapists, murderers, casino operators will feast while the oppressed masses – whether Sinhala, Tamil or Moslem or any other – will be crushed and bled dry to feed the appetites of these predators. Any form of mass resistance will be drowned in rivers of blood. Of course, to win the race, all kinds of reactionary, chauvinist, fascist forces will don the cap of liberal democracy and appear as the true guardians of the people. The foremost task facing the people is to get rid of the Rajapaksa regime. But, who is to replace the regime? What is the real scientific option that will lead the path to liberation? The oppressed Tamil Nation is being played like a pawn in a deadly imperialist chess game. Worst of all is the fatal illusion being spun that the U.S., India, and the UN can be relied upon to bring liberation to the Tamil Nation. It should never be forgotten that all the imperialist and regional reactionary powers, without exception, including the U.S., EU, Japan, India, Russia, China and Pakistan supported the war, politically, diplomatically and militarily. The military decimation and political suppression of the LTTE [Tamil Tigers] has posed new questions, new solutions, new challenges in building the revolutionary movement of the people of Lanka. It is up to us to sum up and grasp the crucial lessons to be learned and the deadly traps to be avoided in waging national liberation and revolutionary war. We need to learn how to raise and transform a national liberation war into class conscious revolutionary war of the masses targeting the state and the system. For this, we need to make the most conscious, radical, people's democratic revolution aimed at overthrowing the prevailing feudal-colonial state. This is with the objective of breaking with all the political, economic, ideological, social and cultural relations that bind us to the system of Imperialism. We would flower new social relations, and find the ways and means, to optimize and mobilize the conscious creative initiative and power of the revolutionary masses to build a whole new society. A society where the people of Lanka will unite and cooperate at every level of productive, scientific, intellectual, social and cultural activity to achieve a united, independent, democratic and prosperous Land of Lanka, functioning as a liberated base area of world revolution. Only the most radical, anti-feudal/anti-imperialist democratic revolution, led by the proletariat in unity with all exploited and oppressed classes, nationalities and groups, with the vast majority of the peasantry, fishermen, agricultural workers and rural proletarians as a driving force and the workers guiding the way, can liberate the people of Lanka. Whoever wins the presidency, whether the UPFA or UNP, the highly centralized, militarized, chauvinist, hegemonic unitary capitalist state will be consolidated. With or without an Executive Presidency, the Lankan state has been systematically constructed and organically matured to keep the system of feudal oppression and neocolonial domination alive and thriving. It is in this rising situation that we must ourselves decide our future as one, indivisible and invincible People of Lanka. We must decide to smash our chains of oppression and the barricades of division to overthrow the tottering and stinking neocolonial state and system and set up our own people’s democratic state and system. This is so we can join the international proletariat and the oppressed people of the world in the universal struggle for freedom from imperialism and all forms of class, national, gender and caste domination and march towards the bright new era of communism.