{"id":67723,"date":"2017-07-10T17:55:13","date_gmt":"2017-07-11T00:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=67723"},"modified":"2017-07-10T17:55:13","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T00:55:13","slug":"dont-cry-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/07\/10\/dont-cry-for-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Cry for Me \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Jay Deshabandu<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Citizens in our country hear conflicting facts about the new constitution that will be in the parliament or before the people for a referendum in the near future.\u00a0 \u00a0There is strong belief and doubt among many of us about the intent of the need for a new constitution.\u00a0\u00a0 If in fact a new constitution is needed, we need to know first why the present constitution is not good enough in terms of reconciliation that is demanded by state actors.\u00a0 What exactly is weak in the present constitution?<\/p>\n

As a rabbit that comes out of a hat of a magician, a draft version may come out in the parliament in which majority of the members can be bought in terms of rupees and benefits.\u00a0 The government has forwarded a supplementary estimate for funding luxury vehicles and other assets for the ministers that work for the government agenda pushed by international forces.\u00a0 Can such a call for funding luxuries for ministers justify the plight of the tens of thousands of people who became homeless due to various disasters which occurred recently?<\/p>\n

According to main Buddhist leading prelates in the tri-sects, the steering committees spearheading the new draft constitution has no Buddhist Sinhala representation which is the seventy three percent of the Sri Lankan population. If it is true, this is a violation of the first fundamental tenet of democracy.<\/p>\n

Buddhist culture has been thriving in Sri Lanka as the main culture in Sri Lanka, which had contributed to development of social, economic and political fabric of people\u2019s lives of Sri Lanka. The Buddhist rights to call Sri Lanka a Buddhist country is therefore an inalienable cultural right.\u00a0 We cannot delete or disregard the history and functional aspect of Buddhist prelates in the Sri Lankan society.<\/p>\n

No one outside the country has any right to meddle in the constitution making process. Buddhist prelates in the tri-sectors represent all Buddhists monks and lay Buddhist persons.\u00a0 In some sense, all Sri Lankans!\u00a0 The government was not given a mandate to ignore the aspirations of Buddhist Sinhalease, main constituent in the Sri Lankan population in order to please Tamil Diaspora and India.<\/p>\n

As in the present constitution, the inclusion of the word or phrase which dictates that the government places the Buddhism as the foremost religion is only a symbolic gesture. \u00a0It is merely a set of words in the constitution that has no bearing! \u00a0The present constitution does not declare any benefit that Buddhism would enjoy over other religions.\u00a0 Is this the reason as to why so many tills in Buddhist temples are being controlled by the government while financial affairs of other religions are left alone in its control?\u00a0 The government justifies it by indexing the finger at the law that was enacted during the British colonial rule in favor of Christianity.\u00a0 How come this practice continues while upholding Buddhism its foremost place as indicated in the constitution?<\/p>\n

It seems like the government is controlled by outside forces who are trying to socially engineer the fabric of Buddhist culture in Sri Lanka a useless political force.\u00a0 In this context, the leading monks of the tri-sects have clearly and accurately identified the emerging threat against the Buddhist culture by outside forces. \u00a0The government should not cover the issues of Buddhists by placing a plaster of words-Buddhism is the foremost religion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jay Deshabandu Citizens in our country hear conflicting facts about the new constitution that will be in the parliament or before the people for a referendum in the near future.\u00a0 \u00a0There is strong belief and doubt among many of us about the intent of the need for a new constitution.\u00a0\u00a0 If in fact a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jay-deshabandu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67723","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=67723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}