BBS proposals to be included in ‘One Country, One Law’ draft bill
COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s controversial Buddhist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera said on Monday (Nov 1) that recommendations by his ultranationalist outfit, the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), will make it to the proposals to be made by the recently appointed ‘One Country, One Law’ Presidential Task Force.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed the firebrand monk to lead the 13-member task force last week to come up with proposals to implement one law for all Sri Lankans abolishing all other personal laws including Muslim personal laws and some other regional laws that had existed for centuries in Sri Lanka.
Gnanasara’s appointment comes as the administration is facing rising protests over a ban on agrochemicals and rising inflation with money printing worsening the fallout from a coronavirus pandemic.
In his first press conference as the head of the task force, Gnanasara Thera said the BBS had spoken about unethical conversions, destruction of archaeological monuments and cultural invasion.
“Today we have got a result of all our hard work. The President’s attention has been drawn to speak about these issues emphatically,” he told a news briefing organized by the Presidential Media Centre for handpicked journalists.
“We will have to discuss the same things we spoke about as the BBS within this gazette as well and include them in the Bill,” the monk said.
For many speculative questions posed to him by journalists, the monk said he will answer after February 28, 2022, when the task force submits its report to the President. He will be fair by all, he assured.
In 2012, Gnanasara Thera was allegedly at the forefront of an anti-Muslim campaign which called on the majority Sinhalese to boycott Muslim-owned businesses.
The United States in 2014 cancelled a visa issued to the monk while social media platform Facebook blocked his account after his group’s alleged involvement in violence against Sri Lanka’s minority Muslims in the Western coastal town of Aluthgama.
He was later arrested for contempt of court in 2018 during the previous administration but was later pardoned by President Maithripala Sirisnena.
Critics have said Gnanasara Thera has been used to create a rift between the Sinhala majority and Muslim minority for political reasons. But the monk has denied the allegation and has said Sri Lanka’s Sinhala majority has issues that have been ignored by politicians, issues that he had tried to address.
Gnanasara said not all court cases against him were individual acts carried out by his person, but rather due to his intervention on behalf of people who did not have a voice. “All those court cases are politically motivated,” he claimed.
The Presidential Task Force led by him has come under severe criticism for not including ethnic minority Tamil representation. President Rajapaksa has agreed to include Tamil representation though Gnanasara said the priority was not that.
“We are trying to create a framework at the moment. We can discuss and agree later,” he said.
President Rajapaksa had promised One Country, One Law in his election manifesto, which laid much emphasis on national security, particularly in the wake of the Easter bombings.
-economynext.com