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NEW LAWS AGAINST PROSELYTIZING FACES A CRISIS WHEN THE BUDDHIST MONKS ACCUSE MINISTER OF BREAKING AGREEMENT

By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles

The powerful Jathika Sangha Sammelenaya (JSS), Sri Lanka’s biggest organization of Buddhist Monks clashed with the government’s Buddhist Affairs Minister W. J. M. Lokubandara and accused him of breaking the agreement his government reached with the Buddhist monks to prepare legislation against unethical Christian proselytizing in the country.

The written agreement was reached between the government and the Buddhist monks, December 30, as conditions of stopping the fast unto death performed by Venerable Dr. Omalpe Sobhitha and Venerable Rajawatte Wappa in front of the Buddhist Affairs Ministry. .

Lokubandara, himself an oriental scholar and a Buddhist monk oriented man coming from the heart of the Sinhala Buddhist countryside of the central hills has been utilized by a Cinnamon Gardens urbane elite oriented Prime Minister who was brought up in a Church of England culture, to keep the politically agitating Buddhist monks at check. Lokubandara did the job for his boss well for quite a period but the growing crisis showed that his political fortunes were fading away and to keep the Buddhist monks in control with the same old tricks were no longer feasible.

When the opposition Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) accused Ranil Wickremesinghe of entering into a secret pact with the LTTE before elections, Lokubandara told Buddhist monks there was no such pact and despite glaring evidence many Buddhist monks believed Lokubandara. When JVP accused Ranil Wickremesinghe of trying to lift the proscription of the LTTE Lokubandara held meetings of Buddhist monks all over the countryside and told them not to agitate against the government since nothing of that nature would ever happen. With the agitation of the Buddhist monks successfully stopped also with the help of the state controlled Dinamina of the Lake House, the Sinhalese daily reaching all temples, helping the government policy, Ranil Wickremesinghe was successfully able to lift the legal proscription of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fulfilling an important promise given to the rebel group as a condition of support to put him in power in the Prime Minister’s seat. Many Buddhist monks say privately that was also the way the country’s Buddhist Affairs minister lost his credibility among the Buddhist monks.

This time the JSS publicly rejected the state gazette notification published by the Buddhist Affairs Minister and said the notice contravened the agreement reached between the government and Buddhist monks about appointing a Buddhist monk Committee to address the initial need of drafting new laws against proselytizing.

A spokesman of the JSS said, “ We repeatedly requested the Minister the committee should reflect all three sects of the country while he was telling us that he could appoint whoever monks we liked. But we wanted to do this in a proper way and gave a specified plan of how to appoint the monks. That has never been heeded by the minister.”

The spokesman interviewed over the telephone said when a committee did not reflect the Sect structure of the Buddhist monks and appointed haphazardly according to the wishes of the Minister what would happen was that conflicts could arise between the official sect versions and individual monk versions destroying the purpose of the intended bill .

The spokesman said that the committees of the three sects of the Buddhist monks should have nominated the appointees to the committee but the Minister had appointed them without consulting the committees. The appointees were very much embarrassed when they were named without the official consent of the three sects, the JSS accused

The JSS charged the minister of taking arbitrary steps when the instructions of how to appoint the committee was very clear in the agreement.

The spokesman accused the Minister of confusing the issue instead of resolving it.

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