As a part of its campaign for the Southern Provincial Council elections on October 10, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Students for Social Equality (ISSE) in Sri Lanka will hold a public meeting in the provincial capital of Galle on Sunday, October 4. The party is standing a slate of 26 candidates for the Galle district.

The election is one of a series of provincial council polls called by President Mahinda Rajapakse to strengthen his hand in waging an “economic war” to build the nation. Under conditions of acute economic crisis produced by decades of communal war against the LTTE and a deepening global breakdown, the government is seeking to impose the burden on working people,

Whether in the plantations, on the docks or in the electricity boards, workers are beginning to recognise that they have to conduct their own independent struggle against employers, the government and particularly the trade unions. Above all, such a fight requires an alternative political perspective.

The SEP invites workers, youth, villagers and the unemployed to our meeting. We will be explaining the necessity of opposing the communal politics of all of the establishment parties and uniting around the struggle for a workers’ and farmers’ government in Sri Lanka as part of the broader struggle for socialism internationally.

Venue: The lobby, Galle Town Hall

Time: 4.00 p.m. on Sunday, October 4

Main speaker: Wije Dias, SEP General Secretary