TO THE AID OF THE CEYLONESE REVOLUTION
The parliamentary elections in Ceylon, fixed leading to the virtual disappearance of interfor March, 1960, are being fought in the context mediary formations.
of dark intrigues, plots and even crimes of the imperialist and native reactionary forces, and of the feverish expectations of the masses who are filled, according to their social layer (workers, peasants, Sinhalese and Tamil petty-bourgeois)
with impatience for action, unrest and even confusion.
Elsewhere we publish detailed news of the events which have led up to the assassination of
Prime Minister Bandaranaike and the dissolution of parliament.
From the confused and constantly changing picture which the political situation in the country has presented since then, certain traits emerge clearly, however: the country is going through a prerevolutionary crisis which is rapidly maturing and which will soon attain a radical conclusion, one way or the other. The social forces are being polarized around the most dynamic representatives of the extreme Right and the extreme Left,
In such a climate the parliamentary way, even if it proves to be respected, could be only a stage in the search for a power resting on extra-parliamentary forces. Reaction, imperialism and the compradore bourgeoisie are still hesitating between holding the elections and staking everything on a victory of the United National Party and the temptation of a final coup d'état, consolidating the de facto dictatorship of the present government over which Dahanayake, the latest 'strong man" in process of being built up, presides. The results of the partial local elections held recently in Colombo and elsewhere seem to favor the prospect of a possible victory of the UNP.
But how complete would such a victory be? Only a crushing victory of the Party in question could permit reaction to base itself on a power which, though with a parliamentary façade would be sufficiently strong at a later stage to break the working-class organizations,
If reaction comes to doubt such a possibility in the course of the elections, it would be able to inflict anew its choice in favor of a coup d'état installing an openly dictatorial power.
The revolutionary Opposition must be seriously prepared for all eventualities both before and after the eventual elections. For in any case the lays of bourgeois parliamentary democracy are henceforward numbered in this island, the "Switzerland of the Far East."
This Opposition is represented basically by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, Ceylonese Section of the IVth International.
With the de facto disappearance of the centrist Party of Bandaranaike, and the marked setbacks both to the Philip Gunawardena group and to the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL a bold class program and inaugurating thus the Ceylonese social revolution, proletarian and socialist. Never was the stake in the struggle taking place more clearly defined objectively: a pro-imperialist and capitalist dictatorship, or a worwers' and peasants' government.
The revolutionary opposition will not fail to clarify for the masses this meaning of the struggle, and appeal to them to mobilize and organize in every way to confront reaction and beat it.
Organization of the masses, including their military organization into workers' militia and peasant corps which could eventually begin a guerilla war in the event of a reactionary coup, becomes an imperious necessity.
In the decisive fight in which the LSSP is
Communist party, the tina be comet pole of the wage international revolutionary Marxist of attraction, revolutionary forces of the country which are lining up against the threatening reaction. It is to be hoped that the organizations claiming to represent the working class will make a Front with the LS SP to ward off this danger. The victory of the revolutionary opposition will be the result of a mobilization and an organization of the masses, both on the parliamentary and the extra-parliamentary field, for the aim of a workers' and peasants' government applying now engaged, it benefits from the active solidarity vanguard, and particularly of the IVth Interna-
The International Secretariat of the lUth International renews its appeal to the whole international Marxist proletarian vanguard, and particularly to the sections of the International, materially and morally to aid the struggle of the LS SP for workers' and peasants' power in Geylon. Let our international solidarity show itself in action, full and prompt!