By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson
International League of People’s Struggle
May 23, 2015
Comrades and friends,
The International Coordinating Committee and the entirety of the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS) wish to convey warmest greetings of solidarity to Gabungan Serikat Buruh Independent (GSBI) and the delegates now convened to hold the Third National Congress. We congratulate the GSBI for its success in organizing this congress
We salute the GSBI for all its efforts and achievements as the national trade union serving as the center of workers’ struggle. It has stood out as an independent, open, militant, patriotic, democratic and responsible labor center since its establishment on 21st March 1999, in Jakarta, Indonesia. We are therefore proud of the GSBI as a member-organization of the ILPS.
We appreciate highly the fact that the components of GSBI took part and became tested and tempered in the struggle to overthrow the Suharto fascist military ruling clique and thereafter became determined to become a strong labor center in the face of the power and wealth of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class, the persistence of the agents of fascist dictatorship and the rampage of neocolonialism and neoliberalism.
We welcome as highly significant and acutely urgent the thematic call of the Congress: “Rise, Unite to Build and Strengthen GSBI as a Genuine Trade Union for the Workers’ Prosperity and Indonesian Sovereignty”. We consider as absolutely necessary for the Indonesian working class to have a strong united trade union movement in order to fight for the national and democratic rights and interests of the Indonesian people and improve the working and living conditions of the workers.
The best guarantee for the advance of the people’s struggle for national and social liberation is to uphold the leadership of the working class through its revolutionary party and a strong and militant trade union movement. The working class is the most progressive productive and political force, capable of leading the new democratic revolution and proceeding to the socialist revolution.
Indonesia continues to be dominated today by the forces of foreign monopoly capitalism which wantonly plunder the natural resources and ruin the environment, conjure the illusion of development through unproductive and consumption-oriented activities and extract superprofits from direct and indirect investments. The rampage of neocolonialism and neoliberalism is possible only because the US and other imperialists are assisted by the local exploiting classes.
The crisis of the world capitalist system as well as the crisis of the local ruling system is ever worsening. The imperialists and their local reactionary agents are escalating the exploitation and oppression of the people as they pass on the burden of crisis to the people, especially the toiling masses of workers and peasants. The people can lift themselves from their suffering through resolute and militant resistance against their oppressors and exploiters.
We are confident that the congress will be able to consolidate the GSBI by summing up and evaluating its experience, strengthening its unity and fighting spirit and spelling out the tasks for further strengthening the organization, multiplying its achievements and producing more leaders in the course of struggle to defend the rights and interests of workers and the entire people.
Indonesia is a huge country with a huge population. It has a high potential for fulfilling social needs and all-round development and contributing significantly to the all-round progress of the peoples of the world. The Indonesian people, especially the toling masses of workers and peasants, can realize such potential.
They can do so by asserting national sovereignty and independence, empowering themselves through the exercise of their own democratic rights, developing their economy through national industrialization and land reform, achieving social justice, promoting their patriotic and progressive culture and engaging in anti-imperialist solidarity with the peoples of the world.
The most powerful enemy of the Indonesian working class and the people is US imperialism. It masterminded the 1965-66 massacres in order to overthrow the Sukarno government, suppress the patriotic and progressive forces and install the Suharto fascist military dictatorship. To this day, it continues to impose neocolonial and neoliberal dictates on Indonesia.
The GSBI must build a strong trade union movement and cooperate with other forces in order to fight and prevail over US imperialism within Indonesia. But it must must also link up with the international trade union movement and the broad masses of the people abroad and join the common struggle against US imperialism, its allies and puppets. It must undertake annually an International Solidarity Affair similar to that done by the Kilusang Mayo in the Philippines.
It must establish and develop relations of solidarity with the member-organizations of ILPS and with the unions within the framework of the Workers’ International Struggel Initiatives (WORKINS), which have been formed under IPS Commission 5 on Workers’ Concerns. It must seek out the trade unions and people’s organizations that are truly anti-imperialist and democratic and are at best under the leadership of genuine revolutionary parties of the working class in various countries.
We, the International League of People’s Struggle, wish the utmost success of the Third National Congress of GSPI. We hope that this congress opens the way wider for greater victories of the Indonesian working class and the broad masses in the struggle for national and social liberation along the anti-imperialist and democratic line. We look forward to GSBI contributing the most it can in building the international solidarity of the working class and humankind.
Long live GSBI !
Long live the working class in Indonesia!
Long live the Indonesian people!
