[In its July 31 issue, Dagens Nyheter, the most respected Swedish daily newspaper, published an interview with Bala Tampoe, leader of the Ceylonese section of the Fourth International and one of the main leaders of the Ceylonese labor movement. The text is given below. The translation is by Intercontinental Press/Inprecor.]
"In its first year in office, the rightist government in Sri Lanka has managed to break all its election promises. J.R. Jayewardene and his party are steadily losing their popular support."
This was said by Bala Tampoe, one of Sri Lanka's best known and most militant union leaders. He is now visiting Sweden.
Bala Tampoe's organization, the Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU) is playing the leading role in the attempt to build a united front of the unions to resist the attacks of the government.
In July 1977, the National Party led by J.R. Jayewardene won a landslide victory in the parliamentary elections. The former ruling party, the Freedom Party of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, lost almost all its seats. The other left parties were totally frozen out of parliament.
The simple-majority system for elections partially explains this abrupt shift, but the results also represented a protest vote. It was a protest against deteriorating living conditions, rising unemployment, and the previous government's attempt to suppress its critics.
"Jayewardene promised to put everything right," Bala Tampoe said. "He promised to increase the grain rations; he promised jobs; and he promised to restore democratic rights."
The question of grain rations is particularly important in Sri Lanka. The system was introduced by the British during the Second World War, and no government has dared to abolish it. There is a saying that any government that lowers the grain ration is finished.
Faced with growing economic problems, the Bandaranaike government cut back the rations. Jayewardene promised to increase them, and he won.
But the rations have not been increased, Bala Tampoe said. Since the National Party took office, the opposite has happened. They lowered the rations! When the regime presented its budget last fall, it was revealed that they were taking guaranteed rations away altogether from persons earning more than 300 rupees a month [US$46.50]. The ones mainly hit were industrial and public workers.
"Never before has any government dared to take away the rations," Bala Tampoe said. "They have been an important right for the worst off. The government's measure has produced unprecedented discontent among the people. But according to the reports in the press, the World Bank is satisfied."
The government has not been able to do much about unemployment either. And it has also violated its promises with regard to democratic rights. This has been felt, for example, by the Tamils (a minority of Indian origin), trade unionists, and supporters of the former regime.
The Tamils, who make up about 20 percent of the population, live mainly in the northern and northeastern provinces but also on plantations and in cities around the country. In the elections, the Tamils in the north put forward a program calling for a separate Tamil state, and won all the seats in these districts. They became the second largest party in the parliament.
Only a few weeks after the new government took office, provocateurs created disturbances in the northern provinces. Unrest spread, but the police failed to act. The situation soon became threatening, and thousands of Tamils living in the south fled to the northern provinces.
Since many of the Tamil refugees held key positions in administration and in economic life, difficulties increased, and it was only at that point that the government intervened.
Bala Tampoe does not accuse the government directly of being behind the attacks on the Tamils, but he accuses it of standing by and taking advantage of the development.
"The Tamils had to go to the government and ask for protection, and so the demand for a separate state was pushed into the background."
Later the government exploited the situation among Tamils to pass antiterrorist laws that, in Bala Tampoe's opinion, are so elastic that they can be used against other opposition groups.
Tampoe himself is a Tamil, but his union is 90 percent Sinhalese. He himself does not want a Tamil state, but he defends the Tamils' right to demand selfgovernment.
The supporters of the previous regime in various positions have also suffered as a result of the change in regimes. For example, many teachers who supported Bandaranaike have been transferred, and some normal schools have been closed.
Bala Tampoe is most concerned, perhaps, about the antiunion measures the government is trying to carry through. Although it is split between many federations, the labor movement in Sri Lanka has long been a strong and militant one.
Among other things, the unions have opposed the government's plans to set up a duty-free zone on the model of Hong Kong and Singapore. They argue that a duty-free zone is no solution for the country's problems but simply represents an attempt to attract foreign industrialists with promises of economic advantages and cheap labor.
In January, a government committee presented a proposal for regulation of trade-union activity. In the labor movement, this is seen as an attempt to limit the right to strike, increase the government's ability to intervene in the life of the unions, and reduce the workers' job security.
Faced with this threat, major sections of the union movement joined to mount a common protest. And in this, the CMU, which is not bound to any party, was able to play a leading role. Bala Tampoe wrote the draft of the protest statement, which was signed by thirty unions. Throughout the country, protest meetings and demonstrations were held, and drew a large attendance.
This forced the government to retreat. It announced that the new rules would apply only to the public sector and not to the private one.
But the union movement is not going to accept the new laws, even in this scaled-down form. They remain unacceptable to the workers in the public sector. Moreover, Bala Tampoe is still to be convinced that the government's retreat is anything more than temporary.
"Trade-union and democratic rights in Sri Lanka are still threatened."