The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) will be holding its second online election meeting at 3 p.m. on Saturday, July 11, streamed live on the party’s Facebook page. The SEP is fielding 43 candidates in the Colombo, Nuwara Eliya and Jaffna districts in the scheduled August 5 general election.

Sri Lanka’s elections are being held as COVID-19 is spreading rapidly across the world, a result of the utter refusal of governments and the ruling classes everywhere to take adequate prevention measures. It is now escalating out of control in India, and across the entire South Asia region.

The pandemic has deepened the global crisis of capitalism and seen President Rajapakse’s government and Sri Lankan big business—like their counterparts globally—unleash a brutal assault on jobs, wages and working conditions and impose untold hardship on the rural poor.

Rajapakse aims to establish a dictatorial regime based on the military and backed by Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinist groups. The president’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna hopes to secure a two-thirds parliamentary majority to change the constitution and advance this reactionary agenda. The discredited opposition parties, which have previously ruled the country or propped up big business administrations, have no fundamental differences from this agenda. The pseudo- left groups in Sri Lanka are hangers-on of these capitalist parties.

The SEP is standing in the elections in opposition to all these political formations. It is the only party that is advancing a program for the working class now coming forward to fight the government and employer attacks on the basis of a unified struggle for a workers’ and peasants’ government. The SEP’s election intervention is part of the struggle being waged by our sister parties of the International Committee of the Fourth International for world socialist revolution and against the imperialist war and social inequality.

We urge workers, youth and students to participate in our online meeting where SEP candidates and the party’s general secretary, Wije Dias, will discuss these vital issues.