{"id":71009,"date":"2017-10-24T16:44:32","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T23:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=71009"},"modified":"2017-10-24T16:44:32","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T23:44:32","slug":"leading-monks-condemn-rush-for-new-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/10\/24\/leading-monks-condemn-rush-for-new-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading monks condemn rush for new constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maheesha Mudugamuwa\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

October 24, 2017, 11:27 pm<\/span>
\nA group of leading Buddhist monks yesterday vowed to take to the streets to defeat the government\u2019s move to bring in a new constitution or to amend the existing one \u2013 a move which they alleged would pave the way for the division of the country.<\/p>\n

Ven. Prof. Bellanwila Wimalaratana Nayaka Thera, addressing a press conference, at All Ceylon Buddhist Congress auditorium in Colombo said: “We do not think the government will be able to get a two-thirds majority in parliament to bring in a new constitution or to amend the existing one. Even if it is passed by Parliament it will have to be placed before people at a referendum. Then we will bring out all members of Maha Sangha to the streets to defeat it.”<\/p>\n

\"article_image\"<\/p>\n

Supporting the views of the Karaka Sangha Sabha, of the Malwatu and Asgiriya Chapters, Ven. Wimalaratana Thera said the Maha Sangha was firmly of the view that a new constitution was not the need of the hour.<\/p>\n

“We stress that even amendments to the constitution at this point should be restricted the electoral system,” he said.<\/p>\n

Referring to President\u2019s and Prime Minister\u2019s claim attempts were being made to mislead the public as regards the new constitution, Ven. Wimalaratana Thera asked the President and PM to clarify those allegations and prove if they were wrong.<\/p>\n

He said a close examination of the proposals for a new constitution clearly revealed that there were some proposals that would not only jeopardise peaceful co-existence of the citizens of Sri Lanka but also help promote separatism.<\/p>\n

Stressing that the alternative proposals in the main document camouflaged the real intention of the government and some terms had different and conflicting meanings Sinhala, Tamil and English, Ven. Wimalaratana Thera said that even though the proposals did not use the term federal directly, it had been subtly introduced by use of words that had different meanings in the three languages.<\/p>\n

In Sinhala version the word “Ekiya” (unitary) is there but the English version had the term, \u2018United\u2019,” he noted.<\/p>\n

\"\"Similarly, the special priority position accorded to Buddhism had been diluted by the introduction of alternative amendments to Article 9 of the Constitution, the thera stressed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“We are not influenced by any political party and we don\u2019t want to topple the government. What we want is to defeat the proposed Constitution and if people think that they want to amend the executive presidency and electoral process it can be done later. But, for now, the country does not need a new constitution or amendments for the existing constitution.”<\/p>\n

According to Maha Sangha, the contentious proposals aim at diluting the powers of Parliament, taking away the powers vested in the President to monitor the Provincial Councils through the Governors appointed him, establishing a Constitutional Court that will usurp the existing powers of the Supreme Court to make rulings on constitutionality of legislation pertaining to key areas such as land matters, recognising the Northern and Eastern Provinces, abolishing the Concurrent List in the 13th Amendment so as to eliminate the powers of government to intervene in any provincial issues with national implications and doing away with the prevailing provisions for the Government or the parliament to formulate national policies in any subject area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maheesha Mudugamuwa\u00a0Courtesy The Island October 24, 2017, 11:27 pm A group of leading Buddhist monks yesterday vowed to take to the streets to defeat the government\u2019s move to bring in a new constitution or to amend the existing one \u2013 a move which they alleged would pave the way for the division of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71009","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=71009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}