{"id":105776,"date":"2020-08-22T14:16:10","date_gmt":"2020-08-22T21:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=105776"},"modified":"2020-08-22T14:16:10","modified_gmt":"2020-08-22T21:16:10","slug":"no-monks-in-parliament-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/08\/22\/no-monks-in-parliament-please\/","title":{"rendered":"No monks in parliament, please!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

A few Buddhist\nmonks who have long been vocal protestors against the anti-Buddhasasana\nactivities of a large number of foreign funded fundamentalist religious groups\nand a hitherto unheard of, relatively obscure monk by the name of Wedinigama\nWimalatissa are embroiled in a violent controversy over the single national\nlist seat won by the Ape Jana Bala Pakshaya (AJBP) at the recent parliamentary\nelection. (AJBP did not belong to the monks until a few days before nominations\nfor the election closed. They arranged, apparently, on an ad hoc basis, through\nsome commercial transaction, to contest under this previously registered\nparty.) Wimalatissa Thera is a resident monk of the Asgiri Vihara monastery in\nKandy, involved, as can be guessed from scrappy  information available in\nthe social media, in some proprietary dispute with the hierarchy there; he is\nnot known to have had any relationship in the past with the aforementioned\nagitating monks. The visage of the monk that first came out in the media was\nthat of a bearded bounder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time of\nwriting, Wimalatissa is reported to have disappeared amidst the controversy,\neither gone into hiding, or held hostage by a rival group in some unknown\nplace. But a YouTube journalist tracked him down and interviewed him a couple\nof days ago. Wimalatissa Thera was\/is said to be the Secretary of the AJBP. It\nis also claimed that he has been replaced by the party\u2019s working committee. He\ntold the journalist that he nominated himself for the seat in order to prevent\na clash between two senior monks of the party over it; he claimed he wanted to\ngo to parliament and after a short time relinquish his MP post and hand it over\nto one of the two senior monks who he thought was more suitable to occupy the\nseat. Earlier on in the interview, he mentioned the name of the particular monk\nhe had in mind; but he forgot about it towards the end of the interview, where\nhe said he would make way for the other monk who, he said, was more \nknowledgeable and more experienced as he had already been an MP\npreviously. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two senior\nmonks alluded to here are respectively the well known Gnanasara and Ratana\nTheras. There appears to be something more than meets the eye here. It is\nclaimed by a prominent lay activist (who, presumably) was among the founders of\nthe AJBP) that a Sri Lankan man he named with a shady past who is based in\nFrance is directing Wimalatissa to throw the allocation of the AJBP\u2019s national\nseat  into crisis as an attack on the monks\u2019 legitimate nationalist cause\n(of countering the threat posed by certain extremist religious fundamentalist\nsects, protecting the historical Buddhist archaeological and cultural heritage\nof the country, and ensuring the survival of the majority Sinhalese  in\ntheir hallowed homeland of many millennia). Another version is that this is all\nRatana Thera\u2019s doing. He is even alleged to have abducted Wimalatissa Thera.\nRatana has been in parliament for fifteen years (through the previous UPFA and\nYahapalana administrations of 2005-19), but he has little to show for it,\nexcept his substantial contribution to the ouster of the war winning MR\ngovernment, that helped in inflicting the Yahapalana misrule on the just\nliberated country. In any case, the monkeyish buffoonery is a wheels within\nwheels affair that is bound to reflect very negatively on the whole Maha\nSangha, who have historically been required to always face the brunt of enemy\nattacks on the Buddhist nation. But these squabbling monks (a mixture of good\nand bad ones) are only a handful out of the total 36,000 who, unfortunately, do\nnot have the united ecclesiastical leadership and guidance that they can\u2019t do\nwithout in these trying times.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unseemly\nstruggle of a few monks over a parliamentary seat has already left a bad taste\nin many a mouth among the voting public who have delivered a two thirds\nmajority victory to the nationalist SLPP led by Prime Minister Mahinda\nRajapaksa under the overall leadership of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa for the\npurpose of implementing their \u2018Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour\u2019 program of\neconomic development as spelt out in the SLPP election manifesto. No better\nguarantor of the protection of the Buddhist archaeological and cultural\nheritage of the country and of equitably distributed economic development \nwithout any discrimination towards the minorities, than this duo can be\nimagined at present. But these monks could prove to be an impediment to the\nrealization of the nation\u2019s dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that\nonly one monk has been elected to the parliament in a country where over 70% of\nthe population are Buddhist shows that they don\u2019t approve of monks doing\nparliamentary or party politics. The new government must introduce legislation\nto ban MP monks. It is respectfully submitted here that the Venerable Maha\nNayakes ensure that this is included in the new Constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the\nconviction of the monks and the people led by them that only a strong Sinhala\nBuddhist leader is capable of providing good governance for all Sri Lankans of\ndiverse ethnicities and religious persuasions without discrimination, something\nexplained by Arun Janardhanan of The Indian Express newspaper\/August 16, 2020\nin these words: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018A top leader\nclose to the ruling dispensation said poll results means nothing but the fact\nthat Sri Lankan people wanted a strong Sinhala Buddhist leader. MR (Mahinda) is\nthe most popular, Gota (Gotabaya) is the most powerful (now). They are not\nracists. Gota knows that development-focused policies alone will save our\ncountry, not a racist-ethnic politics. He was working towards that, to improve\nthe economy, he will continue to do that,\u201d the leader said\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That legitimate hope has just begun to be realised with the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as president in November last year and the swearing in of the new parliament overwhelmingly supportive of his brother prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa.\u00a0 It is time the monks left them alone to do the needful. –<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island A few Buddhist monks who have long been vocal protestors against the anti-Buddhasasana activities of a large number of foreign funded fundamentalist religious groups and a hitherto unheard of, relatively obscure monk by the name of Wedinigama Wimalatissa are embroiled in a violent controversy over the single national […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}