Socialist Equality PARTY (Sri Lanka)
A product of the time, acting “under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” He acted upon those circumstances, seeking throughout his six decades of political activity as a Trotskyist to direct events in accordance with historical necessity. He fought to divert the spontaneous struggles of the working class away from the “line of least resistance”—that is, away from the path of opportunist accommodation that has led to so many defeats—and toward the goal of the conquest of political power.
He was correct in his opposition to the entry of the LSSP into the coalition government of Bandaranaike in 1964; correct, in opposing the unprincipled centrist vacillations of the LSSP(R), to establish the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka in 1968; the RCL was correct in its rejection of the petty-bourgeois nationalism of the JVP in the critical period of 1970-71; the RCL leadership was correct when it criticized, in 1971; the RCL was correct in its intransigent opposition to the racist war launched by the Sinhalese bourgeoisie in 1983 and in its rejection of the bankrupt nationalism of the Tamil Tigers; and the Sri Lankan section was correct in its opposition to the Indo-Lankan Accord of 1987. The long record of revolutionary opposition contained, however, an immensely creative and positive content. It clearly indicated and explained the correct political path. Throughout Sri Lanka, was respected by political opponents as a man of unimpeachable revolutionary integrity.
Comrade Wiie was a political leader who commanded respect and admiration of the oppressed in both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. For Sri Lankans recognized that only the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) fights for the unity of the entire working class and opposes every form of racialist sectarianism.
Northern Breeze 