Last week, President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s cabinet approved two draft bills that will brutally suppress democratic rights of the people. The first, which is known as the Bill on Security of Online Methods (BSOM), was presented by the Ministry of Public Security; the second measure was the defence ministry’s slightly modified new Anti-Terrorism Bill.
On September 4, Cabinet Minister spokesman Bandula Gunawardena told the media that both bills will be published in the government gazette and subsequently submitted to parliament for approval. When enacted, the measures will give the Wickremesinghe administration dictatorial powers to suppress all anti-government opposition, with the working class its main target.
The new bills are a response to growing popular opposition from workers and the poor against the Wickremesinghe government’s International Monetary Fund-dictated austerity policies. The measures include the restructuring/privatisation of 430 state enterprises and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs. The government has already enacted drastic funding cuts to public health and education, raised water and electricity charges to unaffordable levels, and imposed huge tax burdens on wage earners.
The government fears that these brutal social attacks will produce a mass anti-government explosion like last year’s April–July popular uprising that ousted then President Gotabhaya Rajapakse.
During last year’s uprising, millions of people shared their views and...
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